In fact, and not that you'd know it from the first three pieces on this 1994 disc by Vernon Handley and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Malcolm Arnold was a very great composer. The first piece is Arnold's thrillingly banal A Grand, Grand Overture, with random gun shots, vacuum cleaner sounds, and an ending that refuses to die. The second piece is his lovingly sleazy Concerto for pianos (2), three hands, with its tunes like Ravel on absinthe, its colors like Toulouse-Lautrec on acid, and its harmonies like a drunken ...
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In fact, and not that you'd know it from the first three pieces on this 1994 disc by Vernon Handley and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Malcolm Arnold was a very great composer. The first piece is Arnold's thrillingly banal A Grand, Grand Overture, with random gun shots, vacuum cleaner sounds, and an ending that refuses to die. The second piece is his lovingly sleazy Concerto for pianos (2), three hands, with its tunes like Ravel on absinthe, its colors like Toulouse-Lautrec on acid, and its harmonies like a drunken Vaughan Williams. The third piece is Arnold's unrelentingly vulgar Carnival of the Animals, with its salacious Cows, its parodistic Jumbo, and its one-note evocation of Chiroptera (Bats). Handley and the Royal Philharmonic perform Arnold's banal, sleazy, and vulgar music with vim, vigor, and zest and you really can't ask for more than that.And then comes Arnold's Symphony No. 2, as great an English symphonic work as was written in the second half of the twentieth century. From the bucolic...
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