This entertaining disc contains a healthy sampling of Malcolm Arnold overtures, including the premiere recording of a late work: Robert Kett (1990), a typical essay in the composer’s signature “fife and drum style” (think of the finale of the Fifth Symphony). It shows that despite the dyspeptic style of the last two symphonies, Arnold never lost his popular touch. The performances here are generally fine, though I still prefer the composer’s slower tempo in The Fair Field, and there are no special insights on offer in the more popular works, such as Beckus the Dandipratt or Peterloo.
One disappointment: A Grand Grand Festival Overture, which no one has done right since the original performance in the old, live Hoffnung Festival series. Why this is so remains a mystery since the evidence of the composer’s intentions is as plain as day, and the source of the problem is clear. Current notions of percussion playing in many British orchestras favor very large-diameter cymbals and tam-tams, which produce a smooth “swoosh” with a long decay time, rather than a more penetrating but less lengthy “crash”. Their timbre blends with that of the full orchestra and sounds progressively weaker as everyone else plays louder. The result in this case makes hash of the unspeakably pompous recapitulation of the overture’s second subject, as well as the coda. There’s too much organ, not enough cymbals, and no tam-tam in tutti passages. Rumon Gamba also pointlessly rushes that endless ending, though Chandos has ideally captured the well-tuned quartet of three vacuum cleaners plus floor polisher. It’s a singularly un-grand conception, excessively polite, lacking in both humor and clarity. Handley on Conifer, by the way, isn’t much better, and for the same reasons. So: an enjoyable disc overall despite a couple of reservations. Vivid sound too.
