CD REVIEW -
Malcolm Arnold
Homage to the Queen & Sweeney
Todd
BBC Concert Orchestra
CONDUCTED BY MARTIN YATES
Dutton Epoch CDLX
7420 [88:02]
Malcolm Henry
Arnold (1921-2006) CBE was one of
the leading British composers in
the second half of the 20th
century, also a conductor. He
began his musical career as a
trumpet player with the LPO and,
for a season, the BBC Symphony
Orchestra, and soon attracted
attention writing music that
combined tunefulness, orchestral
brilliance and engaging humour.
As well as his
nine symphonies, over 20
concertos – among them being
those commissioned for Benny
Goodman (clarinet), Julian Bream
(guitar), Larry Adler (harmonica)
and Léon Goossens (oboe) –
and a number of chamber, vocal,
choral and piano works.
Especially of
interest to us, he also wrote a
lot of light and light(ish) music
including over 130 film and
documentary scores – winning
an Oscar for The Bridge on
the River Kwai movie –
and many pieces for brass band,
including the Padstow
Lifeboat March, also some
for wind band.
Other popular
works include the sets of English,
Scottish, Irish and
Welsh Dances, and Overtures
including A Grand, Grand
Overture, which includes
parts for three vacuum cleaners
and a floor polisher. [This was
specially composed in 1956 for
the first of the famous Hoffnung
Music Festivals – ed.]
Surprisingly,
given he was prolific in so many
genres of music, that over the
last ten years of reviews here
until now there had only been one
new Arnold album come our way.
So, to this
welcome very well-filled release.
It comprises two of the four
ballet scores Sir Malcolm
composed. Homage to the Queen
is a one-act ballet created to
celebrate the Coronation of Queen
Elizabeth ll, choreographed by
Frederick Ashton. It premiered at
the Royal Opera House, Covent
Garden, shortly after the
coronation in June 1953.
In a first digital
recording, the music for the
complete 18-movement work is full
of dazzling orchestration,
impressive fanfares, and noble
themes, perfectly catching the
celebratory and patriotic mood of
the event.
Written for the
Royal Ballet with a scenario and
choreography by John Cranko and
first performed at the
Shakespeare Memorial Theatre,
Stratford-upon-Avon in December
1959, Sweeny Todd is the
infamous story of the "demon
barber of Fleet Street", a
fictional character who murders
his customers by slitting their
throats and sending their bodies
down a chute to his accomplice,
Mrs Lovett, who then bakes their
remains into meat pies to sell in
her shop.
This is the first
recording of the complete
14-movement score, some darkly
comedic and others full of
suspense. With lively dances and
dramatic, menacing music it
captures the Victorian horror and
black humour of the subject
matter.
Neither
composition has any
"big" tunes but there
is a lot of entertaining
imaginative music going on and it
is a recommended listen, backed
up by some excellent detailed
booklet notes from Piers
Burton-Page, Hon President of the
Malcolm Arnold Society.
It is always a
pleasure, quite like old times,
to have for review a Dutton
Vocalion release, this one on
their Epoch label of a seemingly
neglected composer with the
splendidly versatile BBC Concert
Orchestra under Martin Yates,
onetime conductor of several
major musicals in his home city
of London with over 80 CDs to his
credit, in a brilliant recording
made in Croydon's Fairfield
Halls, begun on 8th January 2025,
your reviewer's birthday.
Praise, too, for
the album's length, once again
showing up the miserable timings
of too many releases today.
© Peter
Burt, November 2025
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