Music and Vinyl: Arnold - Symphony No.1

Symphony No.1 from Malcolm Arnold was written in 1949 and first performed by the Hallé Orchestra at the 1951 Cheltenham Festival.

Simon Brackenborough has written an excellent overview of Malcolm Arnold's life with particular reference to his symphonies. In an article looking and comparative recordings of Arnold's symphonies Paul Conway wrote this about Symphony No.1:

''Sibelian not only in its breadth of utterance, but also in its very language, especially the woodwind writing, the opening Allegro doesn’t quite realise the massive potential of its hugely impressive opening bars. This introductory statement (consisting of the interval of a rising second and a third contained within a perfect fourth) provides the material for most of the first movement, the composer sticking rigidly to the symphonic principle of integration at the risk of sacrificing variety. Contrast of a kind is provided by the second subject, introduced tentatively on muted strings. The recapitulation combines motifs from both first and second subject and the movement ends on a grand scale but with the feeling that not all the questions raised by the imposing opening statement have been fully developed.

The central Andantino is characterised by the inventiveness of its scoring, including passages where the extremes of the orchestral range are exploited and the orchestration becomes chamber-like. Thus, the Ninth Symphony of 1986, which at first sounds so unusual in its scaled-down scoring, is in fact a logical progression of Arnold’s symphonic style already present in Symphony no 1.

Perhaps only in the Finale is the composer recognisably himself, the first two movements having a rhetorical, objective sweep and lacking the piercingly ironic touches that make Arnold the unique and original composer he is. This vigorous Vivace con fuoco has many fugal passages woven into its Rondo format but the most memorable moment comes just before the coda when a grotesque parody of a military march struts into a tutti climax. Some commentators have seen a savage ironic comment on the composer’s tragically foreshortened military service in this witty quick march. Another explanation may be that Arnold has at last tired of saying big things in his first major orchestral work and wants to let us know that his symphonies, like those of Mahler, will contain material from the ordinary world as well as the metaphysical. The ensuing coda broadens the material of the march into an epic peroration but the unsettling nature of having the rug pulled from under the listener remains and the symphony ends in a rather less exalted world from the rugged grandeur with which it began."

Recordings of Arnold's music that have appeared in these pages can be found here.