Being the more prolific british composer of this century, Malcolm Arnold has touched all kind of genres, instruments and styles, as well proved with his close to one hundred film and TV collaborations, and his up to one hundred catalogued and published works. Among this huge musical panorama it stands, by its own size, his nine symphonies on which Arnold put the best and more personal of himself, and also a big number of orchestral works which make good use of a cynical and scattered sense. The Symphony No.6, composed in 1967 but premiered on the next year, its constructed on three movements and forms a tripartite structure Fast-Slow-Fast, with a central movement which, also, uses the same scheme; a serious and suggestive work, it is his less performed and knowned symphony, although this doesn't mean that is without an evident interest. Very different are the three works which complete the record: First the long and funny Fantasy on a theme of John Field for piano and orchestra, completed in 1975 with a dedication for the pianist which here plays it, John Lill, and which is among his works which showed a bigger influence of the music of Dimitri Shostakovitch, one of Arnold's more respected composers. On a similar path its Sweeney Todd, a ballet composed at the end of the fifties decade, here on a suite prepared in 1984 for Arnold and David Ellis, and which uses the same plot of Stephen Sondheim's famous musical play; Arnold's music, vigorous and with an evident tone both sarcastic and dramatic, it is among his more attractive to hear scores. To finish a symphonic overture, Tam O'Shanter, the earliest in time work on the record, inspired on a Robert Burns ballad; brilliant, vibrant and spectacular, this overture makes an specially virtuous use of the trombone, with its suggestive emulation of the drunken tone of its main character.

Symphony No.6, op.95 (1967) - 26:41
Fantasy of a theme of John Field, for piano and orchestra, op.116 (1975) - 21:42
Sweeney Todd (Suite), op.68a (1984) - 20:09
Tam O'Shanter, op.51 (1955) - 8:24
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - John Lill (Piano) - Conductor: Vernon Handley
CONIFER CLASSICS - 74321 168 47 2 / 78'

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