Richard Arnell (1917-2009)
Concertino for piano and chamber orchestra, Op. 51 (1947)
Canzona and Capriccio, for violin and strings, Op. 37 (1945)
Divertimento No. 1 for piano and chamber orchestra, Op. 5 (1939)
Symphony for Strings (1939)
Divertimento Concertante, for cello and strings, Op. 90 (1961)
Victor Sangiorgio (piano), Sergey Levitin (violin), Aleksei Kiseliov (cello), English Chamber Orchestra/Martin Yates
rec. 2021, St Augustine’s, Kilburn, London
DUTTON EPOCH CDLX7400 [81]
Gone are the days when Arnell was known solely for Beecham’s recording of Punch and the Child. The catalogue now is far more representative of his music and contains symphonic works as well as those for piano duet, and things in between. Amongst the labels that have recorded his music, Dutton stands tallest, by far, and their latest release is devoted to a sequence of works for chamber orchestra composed between 1939 and 1961, all previously unrecorded.
Arnell was a deft, precise composer. There was astringency too, notably in his chamber music but the Piano Concertino, originally conceived for harpsichord, adds crispness and ripe romanticism as well. One feels Arnell at his most unbuttoned here, the music airy and genial in the Vivace finale of this taut 14-minute piece, commandingly played by Victor Sangiorgio. Arnell wrote a big Violin Concerto, which Dutton has recorded, but here’s a sliver of a piece, the Canzona and Capriccio, for solo violin and strings, that conforms to the interest at the time in music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was first performed by Harold Kohon, who was also the first to perform Arnell’s 1940 Violin Concerto, Op.9. The work is a gift to the sensitive soloist, in this case Sergey Levitin, who locates the music’s crisp vivacity with unerring clarity.
The Divertimento No.1 for piano and chamber orchestra dates from 1939. It’s cast in a frank neo-classical form with booklet note writer Lewis Foreman suggesting Hindemith as a precedent. The slow movement is reflective and warmly intimate and the finale full of athletic and attractive themes. Also from 1939 is the Symphony for Strings, though Arnell withheld performance of it and so it’s remained unheard. Arnell did give a copy of the score to Martin Yates, his former pupil, and Yates duly takes on the responsibility of bringing the work to life in its première recording. The long first movement encodes elastic tempi and changing senses of texture and colour, all formulated in writing that is zesty and youthful. The Intermezzo is the central panel of the Symphony, and it gets increasingly athletic whilst the finale, lightly scored, is a quicksilver romp and very attractive.
The Divertimento Concertante, for solo cello and strings was composed in 1961, by which time Arnell had been appointed Professor of Composition at Trinity College of Music. It’s a kind of pastoral with the solo cello primus inter pares, its opening movement conveying fluidity, pensiveness, then sombre withdrawal, before emerging in triumph, the music slowly dying away. There’s an especially lovely and songful central Lento and a finale where metres are constantly changing.
Yates directs the ECO with his accustomed attention to detail and command of the broad conception of each piece. It doubtless helps that he is an Arnell student but more important is the fact that he is faithful to the stylistic individuality of each piece – whether neo-classic, pastoral, or more rugged. With each release in Dutton’s series we are getting a more and more concrete appreciation of Arnell’s very real gifts.
Jonathan Woolf
