But where are the reissues? -especially his own recording of the Third (which I had as a baffled schoolboy close to sixty years ago and would love to hear again) and Handley’s set of the symphonies plus the other Conifer recordings. And then there was the BBC double album including the wonderful ‘Song of Simeon’, surely one of the best Christmas pieces ever.
I was listening to Symphonies 3 and 6 over the last couple of evenings and both seem to me to be outstanding works, masterpieces if you like. Nick’s Shostakovich comparison is entirely apt in many respects and it seems particularly apposite when it comes to his Sixth with its anguished opening movement and circus finale, but in Arnold’s case the high jinks of the finales are underscored by a sense of desperation too that perhaps makes them more a natural outcome of what came before. If only those who decry Arnold would cast aside preconceptions and actually listen, the imagined problems would fall away and they would see the symphonies for the great works they are.
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