Disc Details

Contents

Work Title	Composer
Electra	Malcolm Arnold	Listen
Homage to the Queen: Suite, op.42 a	Malcolm Arnold	Listen

Reviews

• The Royal Ballet’s post-war golden era saw one composer after another being commissioned for new scores, Malcolm Arnold among them. His full-length Homage to the Queen, with its divertissement-strewn scenario about the Four Elements, was first performed on Coronation Day in 1953. It’s an authentic Arnold paradox that the most conventionally devised of all the works presented on this disc drew from him the best and most individual music, his colourful tribute employing the resources of the Sadler’s Wells company at full force. The glittering opening and closing flourishes are entirely as brilliant as expected. And a great deal that comes between is vintage quality: the ‘Water’ sequence is an effortless tour de force of atmospheric conjuring, while the ‘Pas de deux’ is a beautiful extended lyrical span, at once dreamily expressive and vividly focused. ...[Arnold] has posthumously found his definitive interpreter in Rumon Gamba: these are performances that mirror the music itself in their ultra-clear verve and colour.
  Performance ****
  Recording ****
  
  Malcolm Hayes, BBC Music Magazine, 01 March 2010
• With this disc, Chandos further strengthens its enviable track record of resurrecting forgotten British gems. Homage to the Queen is not just a joyfully patriotic listen, it also serves to gird up the listener for the other three ballets’ doom. The programme’s stirring climax is the gritty, frequently atonal and percussion-heavy Electra, recorded here for the first time. Arnold’s ballet music couldn’t have found better ambassadors than the BBC Phil and Gamba; the sense of ‘first night’ excitement and drama they’ve created leaves one aching to see all four onstage, preferably with these great musicians in the orchestra pit.
  Charlotte Gardner, Classic FM Magazine, 01 February 2010
• Homage to the Queen, which is heard here in the six-movement suite extracted by Arnold himself, was composed to a commission by the Royal Opera House as part of the celebrations to mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. In his excellent note, Mervyn Cooke describes the backstage rivalry in which Arnold was unwittingly caught up. The music was choreographed by Frederick Ashton and was well received at first, it seems. However, the ballet fell into complete neglect within a year, until it was revived with new choreography in 2006 to mark the Queen’s eightieth birthday.
  
  The music is very impressive. The first and last sections have unmistakable Waltonian overtones – and are none the worse for that. On the other hand, the exhilarating second section, ‘Dance of the Insects’, the brief ‘Fire Dance’, and the lovely, lyrical Pas de deux, which forms the fifth movement are quintessential Arnold. It’s all ripe stuff and it’s played with a marvellous mix of finesse and relish by Gamba and his excellent BBC orchestra.
  
  Finally we are given the One Act Ballet, Electra, here receiving its first recording. This was another Royal Opera House work, choreographed this time by Robert Helpmann, who based the action loosely on the tragedy by Sophocles. As befits its subject, this is the darkest music on the disc and it’s compellingly effective, very powerful and often extremely exciting. The music is quite grim in tone and pulls no punches. Arnold makes striking use of a battery of percussion, including bongos, tom-toms and timpani and the resulting rhythmic drive is hugely exciting. As the last section – of three – draws to a close (track 22 from 2:43) the frenetic, menacing drumming impels the music forward with immense, dark power. Here, the vivid and potent Chandos engineering, which is enormously impressive throughout the CD, is absolutely stunning in its immediacy.
  
  Over the years Malcolm Arnold’s music has been well served on CD and I have many excellent discs of his music on my shelves. But I fancy this is one of the finest of all. The BBC Philharmonic plays superbly throughout and Rumon Gamba confirms his excellent credentials as an Arnold interpreter that I first encountered in his disc of Arnold overtures a few years ago. Throw into the mix recorded sound in the demonstration class and you have a disc that no admirer of Arnold’s music will want to be without.
  
  John Quinn, Music Web International, 01 February 2010
• Malcolm Arnold's name doesn't automatically spring to mind as a major ballet composer, though in the 50s and 60s he provided an impressive roster of choreographers (such as Frederick Ashton, John Cranko and Robert Helpmann) with a series of scores that in their time were both admired and controversial. ...Electra, deemed an unholy racket in its day, proves to be an atypical but hugely impressive study in extreme rhythmic dislocation. The performances, with Rumon Gamba conducting the BBC Philharmonic, are terrific.
  Tim Ashley, The Guardian, 08 January 2010
• Commissioned to mark the 1953 Coronation and choreographed by Frederick Ashton, Homage to the Queen (Arnold’s first ballet score) enjoyed a glitzy Covent Garden premiere on the evening of the big day itself (June 2nd). Based around a scenario involving the Four Elements, it’s an enormously fetching creation, from which the composer subsequently extracted the present, crowd-pleasing 20-minute suite, and whose brazenly festive and memorably swaggering outer portions frame four numbers: a bustling ‘Dance of the Insects’ (with echoes of the Scherzo from Arnold’s Second Symphony completed the same year) leads to ‘Water’ (which incorporates an enchanting waltz for the pas de trois), succeeded in turn by an explosive ‘Fire Dance’ and quite ravishingly lovely ‘Pas de Deux’. …Rounding off a generous programme is Electra (1963): the idiom is frequently astringent in the manner of the Sixth and Seventh Symphonies but there’s no gainsaying the communicative force behind the notes nor the imaginative resource of Arnold’s scoring….
  Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone, 01 December 2009
• This valuable addition to the Arnold discography includes several works new to disc. Given the nature of his inspiration, it is odd that Arnold did not write more ballets, so we must be grateful for these four very different works. I have been especially struck by the concentrated, intensely dramatic, Electra music. …powerful and highly individual music.
  Robert Matthew Walker, Musical Opinion, 01 November 2009
• ‘This welcome disc from the BBC Philharmonic and Rumon Gamba brings together for the first time four of [Arnold’s] ballet scores from the 1950s and 1960s, when the composer was at the height of his powers.
  ‘Homage to the Queen’ was composed in 1953 as the Royal Ballet’s tribute to the Queen at her Coronation and, remarkably, it had its first performance on Coronation Day. The choreography was by Frederick Ashton and the prima ballerina was Margot Fonteyn. This Suite, made by the composer himself, consists of a wonderful march-like ‘Prelude’ followed by four dances and the finale. The music is typically Arnold: the ‘Dance of the Insects’ is a glittering scherzo, then comes a dreamy waltz, an athletic ‘Fire Dance’ and a languid ‘Pas de deux’ before the majestic finale.
  Despite a recording by the Philharmonia and Robert Irving in 1954 (Douglas Bostock also recorded it, with ‘Rinaldo and Armida’ and other Arnold works, for Classico), the score lay undeservedly neglected until the Royal Ballet revived the ballet in 2006.
  
  The one-act ballet ‘Electra’, which was composed for Robert Helpmann’s return to the Royal Ballet in 1963, is the complete opposite [to Arnold's Sweeney Todd]. This is the dark side of the mature composer, a serious score which deserves to be better known. Here is music of great tenderness contrasted with music of enormous violence. Arnold was no stranger to Manchester; he conducted the BBC Northern Orchestra (as the BBC Philharmonic was known until 1981) on many occasions and was always a much-loved visitor. The present players may not remember him but, under Gamba, they play these works with great passion and verve and make this a disc that every lover of Arnold’s music will want to own. The sound quality is excellent and there is an informative note in the booklet.’
  
  
  Peter Marchbank, International Record Review, 01 November 2009
• If largely neglected in recent times, Sir Malcolm Arnold’s ballets Homage to the Queen, Rinaldo & Armida and Electra were staged at the Royal Opera House, and Sweeney Todd at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. Hearing this tender exuberant music, one can be thankful that it has come to the attention of the BBC Philharmonic, which plays it with affection and panache.
  Geoffrey Norris, The Telegraph, 24 October 2009