In an 80th birthday tribute, BBC Radio 3’s David Wright described him as the “greatest living British symphonist.” Irish composer Gerard Victory said of the Symphonies 3 and 5, “I wish I had written them!” Conductor Bryden Thomson called the 5th “a work to fall in love with.” Yet at the time of these remarks, none of his symphonies had been commercially recorded.
Richard Anthony Sayer Arnell (1917-2009), known to his intimates simply as “Tony,” was a composer of lush, romantic, big-hearted music, full of noble aspirations and transcendent melody. Stranded in the United States for eight years, with the outbreak of World War II as he was visiting the 1939 World’s Fair, he cultivated important friendships with Bernard Herrmann, Virgil Thomson, and Sir Thomas Beecham. His concert works were championed by Beecham, Sir John Barbirolli and Leopold Stokowski. He wrote film music for Robert J. Flaherty and ballets for George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton.
His ballet “Punch and the Child” was recorded by Beecham; the composer himself recorded selections from “The Great Detective.” The symphonies, on the other hand, had to wait until 2005 to receive their first recordings. In light of all the attention lavished on English composers over the years by labels such as EMI, Lyrita and Chandos, this is tantamount to a crime against music.
Though most of the symphonies had been heard in concert (you’ll find some live performances on YouTube), it fell to Martin Yates, one of Arnell’s composition students at Trinity College, and Warren Cohen, the music director of MusicaNova Orchestra in Phoenix, Arizona, to get the ball rolling on a revival of this fascinating and worthwhile body of work (documented on Dutton Vocalion Records and Con Brio Recordings, respectively). But by then the composer was already in his late 80s.
I hope you’ll join me this week on WPRB, as I do my own small part in redressing this unjust neglect with a special program in honor of Arnell’s 100th birthday. We’ll enjoy five hours of Arnell’s orchestral, chamber and instrumental works, with a special visit by Cohen, who will talk a little bit about his experiences with the composer and his output. The celebration will take place this Thursday – the eve of Arnell’s centenary – from 6 to 11 a.m. EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com.
Special thanks to Patrick Jonathan, who shares this photo of Beecham, Arnell and pianist Denis Vaughan, taken at a rehearsal of Arnell’s “Landscapes and Figures” in preparation for a concert at the 1956 Edinburgh Festival. “I love this photo,” Patrick writes. “Tony took it wherever he went to live and put it up on the wall. I bugged him till he got it scanned and gave me a copy!”
