It’s fascinating to watch the long game in classical music: The twentieth century saw the slow transformation of Mahler from being regarded as a long-winded crank to being seen as an epic visionary. More recently, Shostakovich moved from the perception as a bewildered Communist functionary to a modern Dostoyevsky of music. Another massive reputation shift is going on right now: The symphonies of Sir Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006).
It’s a long journey. Arnold was dismissed by the intelligentsia of the post-World War Two era as little more than a pops composer—with perhaps more than a tinge of jealousy—because of his munificent success with composing film music, and because of his easy success with audiences. While the influencers were busy sifting the arcane techniques of post-Webernian academic serialism, Arnold was plugging doggedly tonal music. Thus, he wasn’t taken seriously. And that was a mistake.
Arnold’s reputation began to be complicated by his own behavior. No one was a bigger life of the party than Malcolm Arnold. No one could outdrink him. No one could tell more jokes. No one could be as embarrassing in public. No one could offend more people in one evening. No one else showed such violent mood swings. In time, it became evident that the composer was in trouble, growing dangerously unstable. By the late 1970s, he became fully institutionalized, treated with heavy-duty medications. A decade later, he was diagnosed as only having a year or two to live. With ferocious effort, he composed one last symphony, then lived a long twilight of virtual silence for over another two decades before his death. His perception had shifted from commercial composer to outsider artist. But neither perception caught the real quality of Arnold’s cycle of nine symphonies. Only repeated examination of the works has revealed the stealthy truth: It is a body of work which captures the unstable spirit of our current age.
Symphony No. 1
It started off with suitable volatility. Arnold’s First Symphony (1949) isn’t quite in its composer’s fully mature voice, but he’s well on his way. It starts off with a driving, brassy energy before peeling itself down to a quiet core, then reassembling itself. The second movement does the opposite, starting off quietly, but building to nervous climaxes before reverting. The finale takes off like a ferocious and decidedly modernistic battle, only to pratfall into a trivial march tune which is soon supplanted by a sarcastically grandiose conclusion, a Monty Python ending twenty years before that comedy troupe came to be.
While the composer was often a convincing conductor of his own works, that was spectacularly not the case in 1979, when he was contracted to record his First for EMI (now Warner). As he had already recorded the Fifth symphony, this was expected to be part of a cycle led by the composer. Unfortunately, it was attempted after his incomplete recovery from a full mental breakdown. As detailed the biography Rogue Genius by Anthony Meredith and Paul Harris, Arnold spent the evening before the session drinking heavily at dinner, to the point where the alcohol and his antipsychotic medicines reacted badly, resulting in Arnold embarrassing himself and everyone present quite spectacularly. For the session the following day, he was both hungover from the drinking and dazed from the heavy medication. The resulting performance isn’t a trainwreck, but it is about twenty percent slower than it ought to be, passing by in bizarre—if powerful—slow motion. It’s worth hearing as an example of a creative mind in crisis, but unhelpful as a true picture of the piece.
The work has had a number of recordings with varying levels of success. Vernon Handley’s Conifer/Sony recording is particularly effective at portraying the nervous tension of the music, though Handley arguably miscalculates the arrival of the trivial march with a tempo so perky that he doesn’t leave himself much room to accelerate. Andrew Penny is often highly insightful in Arnold’s symphonies, though his First on Naxos feels uncharacteristically uncertain, which leaves the orchestral contribution underpowered. On the internet, a headlong fling into the work by Rumon Gamba loses too much detail, though the sheer energy is impressive. A similarly rushed rendition by Keith Lockhart and the BBC Symphony appeared on an issue of the BBC Classical Music Magazine.
The clear winner of the First Symphony sweepstakes is Sir Richard Hickox and the London Symphony Orchestra on Chandos. The performance combines power, polish, and poise with a tremendous energy, including a terrific timpani thwack at the end of the first movement. Hickox relishes the slimy slithering of the trombone glissandos that lurk in the background in the first movement, and he judges the satire of the perky march at the end of the final movement to perfection. The assured performance, combined with Chandos’ most vivid sound makes this unbeatable.
Symphony No. 2
Malcolm Arnold emerges in his full voice in the second symphony (1953). It opens with a relaxed, genial warmth, but in classic Arnold fashion, it doesn’t stay there. Mischief soon casts a Nielsen-like eye on the soundscape, but only lurks in the background of the first movement. After a quick ending to the first, the second movement, the first classic Arnold scherzo, gets very rambunctious. What at first sounds breezy turns volatile, with an indeterminate ending setting the stage for the work’s dark heart, a third movement lento with strong funeral march elements. The influence of Mahler and Shostakovich is certainly here, but Arnold’s own desperate winsomeness adds a flavor that makes it unlike anyone else’s music. The finale returns to brighter pastures, or perhaps even a fairground, but the dark genie having been unbottled, it’s never far away.
As good as Hickox’s First (Chandos) was, he misses the mark in the Second by trying too hard to make the slow movement epic, stretching it out to nearly fourteen minutes. The thing with Arnold is that often the music is fueled by characteristic gestures that don’t necessarily work at exaggerated speeds. The gesture in this work is the little two-note “toodle” that the piccolo and other instruments play a few minutes into the movement. In the best performances, it has a sort of “whistling in the dark” feel, but in Hickox, the players of the London Symphony are forced to play it slowly, making it feel self-conscious and awkward. The rest of the performance is polished and impressive, but the misfiring of the whole slow movement puts it out of contention.
There is a fine performance conducted by the composer himself that can be found on YouTube, though the poster had no information about the year. It features Arnold conducting the BBC Welsh Orchestra (now the BBC National Orchestra of Wales). Judging from the clear but monophonic sound of the recording, I’d guess it is from the mid-1960s. Thus, it misses being the pick due to the limited sound, but it’s a performance with great verve, which offers many lessons on how to bring the music to life, lessons which it appears only Andrew Penny seems to have taken to heart (see below). Vernon Handley (Conifer/Sony) paces the slow movement slightly faster than Hickox, though still with a trace of ponderousness, his other movements are quite effective, however, even if not quite as trenchant as Arnold himself. The Royal Philharmonic plays with impressive power in attractive though somewhat distant recorded sound. It is the earlier recording by Sir Charles Groves and the Bournemouth Symphony (originally EMI, now available from Warner) that finds a more natural pace for the slow movement, letting it fall into place as the natural counterpoint of the quicker movements. The vintage late 1970s sound comes up fresh in reissued versions. There is also a solid performance issued by BBC Music Magazine of a 2019 performance by Barry Wordsworth and the BBC Concert Orchestra that is worth picking up, if you can track down a copy.
It is with the performance of the Second that Andrew Penny and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland (Naxos) hit their stride. Penny finds a perfectly natural pace for the slow movement, only spending around ten minutes on it, which is all it needs. This allows the characteristic Arnold nervousness as part of the feel of the movement, instead of making it into mock-Mahler or sham-Shostakovich. This volatility of spirit gels into something bigger than the sum of the notes, giving Penny’s performance a vivid emotional impact, essential to Arnold.
Symphony No. 3
This work opens with a characteristic mix of geniality and unease. As the symphony gets underway, it shifts between downright cheerful and anxious strains, sometimes combining or layering the moods. The movement morphs into a scherzo in the manner of Sibelius’ Fifth, closing the first movement exuberantly. The lento second movement is dark and ultimately explosive, closing in a white-hot fury. The finale’s disingenuous opening comes as a surprise, and Arnold’s determination to stay upbeat ultimately wins the day, though the insistence carries a desperate edge.
The playing of the London Symphony is impressive in Hickox’s Chandos recording, but the conductor’s expansive pacing turns the music hectoring. The closing of the finale seems intentionally designed to be aggressive, which is valid, but the recording venue—All Saints Church in Tooting—is far too churchly, turning everything into an irritating racket, particularly in the noisy closing pages.
As one of Arnold’s less-frequently recorded symphonies, the field is small. Of interest is certainly Arnold’s own 1959 Everest recording with the London Symphony. Arnold knows better than anyone how his music should go, so it is essential listening. The LSO of the late 1950s, however, struggles in places with Arnold’s tricky writing, keeping it from being a top recommendation. Andrew Penney on Naxos is in fine form in the piece, steering it through volatile waters with insight and skill, though his orchestra must yield to one other recording.
One wonders if Vernon Handley picked the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra because he knew he could push them harder in rehearsal. The London orchestras tend to be great sight readers who don’t bloom with extensive rehearsal. The RLPO, however, sounds fantastically drilled in Handley’s Conifer recording, offering the finest playing of any recording out there, with Handley’s tight focus nailing the volatility of Arnold’s emotions. Perhaps this rehearsal issue is why the RLPO recordings are the best from Handley’s cycle, whereas the ones with London’s Royal Philharmonic feel uneasy (and not in the way Arnold is supposed to sound uneasy!).
Symphony No. 4
Arnold’s Fourth suffered a rough critical ride at first from critics who seemed unable to grasp that one could incorporate pop music elements into a serious composition. Indeed, it has been widely noted that this symphony’s use of Afro-Cuban percussion instruments seems to have everything to do with the unfolding Notting Hill race riots in the UK at the time it was being written. The first movement opens with an uneasy mix of searching melody, jazzy asides, and bursts of the percussion instruments. By the time of its premiere, 1960, one would hope that listeners would have been able to deal with a hybrid of popular and classical elements. After all, by this time composers like Gershwin were in the rear-view mirror. But the thing that seemed to get to the critics was the nature of one of Arnold’s themes in the first movement: The third theme that emerges is unabashedly tuneful, and has even been described as a “sleazy jazz tune.” What it is, in fact, is a perfectly legitimate conjuring of the spirit of the commercial music of its time. If you want to skewer the crassness of a society, how else exactly are you supposed to do it? Again, Arnold being ahead of his time, over a half century ahead of his critics. The tension between the percussion instruments’ drive and the louche lounge music builds but never entirely erupts in the first movement. The second is a classic uneasy Arnold scherzo, with a notable mockery of serialism in that the return of its main theme is played backwards. The slow movement is languorous and sensual, followed by a fugal finale where tensions finally erupt, including a vulgar march that tries to undermine the integration of all the symphony’s elements near the end.
There is another Malcolm Arnold recording from “the dark years” that distorts more than it edifies. When Arnold conducted the premiere of this symphony in 1960, his performance took about 37 minutes. His late-1970s recording with the London Philharmonic for the Lyrita label times in around 54 minutes. The caveats and advantages are the same as in his recording of the First.
The symphony may not have fared well initially, but it has challenged conductors to do good work keeping a grip on its disparate elements in recordings. A rare 2018 non-cycle performance from Keith Lockhart and the BBC Concert Orchestra (a BBC Music Magazine release) proves competitive, with playing, conducting, and recording of the good quality, only falling short in the reticence of Lockhart’s treatment of the march in the finale. Handley is across the board far more aggressive everywhere, which is an effective approach if you can take his relentlessness. Penny is more subdued and balanced, in comparison, but still highly effective.
So often in the cycles that have been recorded, a poor performance has ended up coupled with a good one. Thus, just as Hickox’s Third was a wide miss, his Fourth is outstanding, the conductor’s taste for spacious tempos giving the social commentary of the piece with an impassive poker-face, which arguably makes more of a statement than Handley’s in-your-face aggression. The church acoustic is surprisingly effective for the percussion in the Hickox Chandos recording, and doesn’t turn it into a noisy soup the way the Third came out.
Symphony No. 5
Though there are delightful and astonishing moments throughout the Arnold symphonies, one of the absolute peaks of them all is the Fifth. It opens with a questioning oboe, but quickly passes through nervous pizzicato strings to threatening percussion. After establishing a wide but commandingly intense opening group of gestures, Arnold suddenly veers in an entirely new direction with a tenderly magical and shimmering second theme. These fragments gel and recombine in endlessly surprising ways, summoning wonder, unease, and sorrow. The slow movement starts off too lushly to be believed, sounding like the soundtrack to a Hollywood romance. But Arnold then proceeds to quietly tear the theme apart, then slowly reassemble it in a way that makes its final recap sound fragile and wounded. The scherzo is delightfully breezy, but with a dangerous snap. Its trio mocks the commercial music of the period, sounding like the music for an elevator ride in a demented department store. The finale starts off marching energetically, but marches in circles, never getting anywhere. After a huge buildup that promises relief, a huge climax erupts, but riding the wave is the over-the-top romantic theme from the slow movement, a “happy ending” so trite and cheap, the effect is outrageous. But Arnold knew exactly what he was doing. With a hollow strike on a side drum, the harmony twists sideways into the minor, and the whole thing collapses like a suddenly charred corpse. A few fragments of distant bells sound over a fade into darkness. It’s a shattering ending, perhaps the most shocking symphonic close since Mahler’s Sixth.
Vernon Handley’s grip on this music is so tight, it feels claustrophobic (Conifer/Sony). While that’s surely the right feeling in places, the music also needs to relax in others in order to summon real magic. The driving pressure is so relentless here, it inhibits the full range of Arnold’s genius.
Arnold’s own 1972 recording with the City of Birmingham Symphony (EMI/Warner) is the composer’s finest commercial recording of any of his symphonies. The spacious acoustic will appeal to some listeners more than others, though the CBSO is fully up to the task of bringing this delicious but wrenching work to life, particularly when under the baton of the composer pre-breakdown. There are also some convincing airchecks of other Arnold performances of the piece, in variable sound. A more recent surprise entry into the field came from the BBC Music Magazine’s release of a 2021 Proms performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by its music director, Sakari Oramo. Oramo leans toward a continental, Mahlerian approach to the piece, but his commitment bears real stature and makes one wish that those forces would take up the torch for a modern cycle. (As an aside, the BBCSO tweeted after Oramo’s performance “Why do we not hear more Arnold?” Well, the ball’s in your court. Get to work and lead the world!) Hickox (Chandos) is effective in the work, and deserves special notice for the care with which he handles the slow movement, making sure that the lush theme never becomes mawkish or overly glossy. The ultra-reverberant recording works in some parts of the piece, though not all.
There may be a couple of blurred passages in spots, but the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland under Andrew Penny (Naxos) achieve such bewitching emotional layers in this symphony, it makes a strong reference choice, particularly since no one else nails the ending more terrifyingly, not even the composer himself. The more intimate recording may also score for listeners who find the acoustic of the original Arnold recording a touch too epic.
Symphony No. 6
Arnold’s Sixth is not yet well known, but this is the kind of music that can only grow in stature as the years pass, as more people hear it. It continues Arnold’s work of transforming popular music by fusing it to a symphonic framework, which is after all the same thing Haydn and Mozart did in the early days of the symphony. Arnold though, was taking inspiration at this point (the late 1960s) from the improvisatory jazz riffs of saxophonist Charlie Parker, as well as his usual plunder points of the period commercial music stylings of film, advertisements, pop music, and light theater. All this is transmogrified with a wizard’s ear and a dark soul, making for essential listening. The first movement combines seemingly spontaneous gestures with ominous buildups. The second movement is an elegy with a jazzy interlude, while the finale brings brightness verging on mania.
Frankly, no one misses the boat in this symphony, and you can’t go wrong with any of the available options. If there is one that perhaps is a little wide of the target, it would be Vernon Handley’s Conifer/Sony recording, and that’s really only in the slow movement, which he paces so broadly it loses some focus in the process. His first movement is also a shade slower than Arnold’s own ideal pace, but Handley uses the space to build up the ominous passages impressively. The playing of the Royal Philharmonic is good, as is the recorded sound, and in such an interesting symphony, why wouldn’t you want to have Handley’s alternative view as well?
No discussion of the piece should go without reference to Arnold’s own broadcast performances, available on the Internet. His premiere with the BBC Northern Symphony in Manchester is so effective—and gets such a cheering response from the audience—it’s hard to believe the piece didn’t immediately launch into the worldwide repertory. The fact that it didn’t proves something about the grudge the arcane intelligentsia had against Arnold at the time, which surely helped bring about his subsequent collapse. But in 1968, he was able to deliver a performance with stinging snap, and the BBCNSO gave him the rehearsal time for the orchestra to master it. Only the somewhat distant recorded sound prevents it from being a top choice. The same orchestra can also be found online in a 1981 performance led by Bryden Thomson. The orchestra still shows a proprietary feistiness in the work, in rather better recorded sound, even if it in no way compares to modern recordings sonically. The Chandos recording conducted by Hickox has more fire and spark than some from that cycle, though the churchly acoustic remains an issue.
I’m going to cheat and name a tie for the pick. Another Malcom Arnold performance is available online with the BBC Symphony from 1971. With the work even more firmly in his grasp, and fractionally broader tempos, Arnold makes the piece utterly terrifying in some places, bewitching in others. Recorded sound is good. The reason for the tie is that one modern recording, the one on Naxos led by Andrew Penny, is the only modern recording which rivals Arnold himself for grasp, excitement, and terrifying projection of this music, in fine recorded sound.
Symphony No. 7
The Seventh (1973) is another Arnold symphony of notable stature. It is arguably his most violent work, though moments of magic are never far away, even if they feel more elusive and less stable here than in the earlier symphonies. The first movement has a belligerent way of grinding in place at times, almost like a person slamming his head against the wall in frustration, surely a sign of the composer’s further destabilization in the early 1970s. Alarmingly, Arnold remarked that these turbulent movements were portraits of his three children, surely as seen through the distorting lens of his growing mental illness. The slow movement, identified with his autistic son, goes to strange places, with the untuned percussion at one point approximating the main theme. The fast finale surprises at one point with a passage inspired by the popular Irish folk band, The Chieftains, a favorite of Arnold’s other son. Each movement is punctuated (or punctured) by a loud, clanging cowbell struck with a drumstick, as disconcerting as anything else in this uneasy but astonishing piece.
We have a recording of Malcolm Arnold conducting the Seventh the BBC Symphony in 1976. Most conductors bring the work in around 35 minutes (Gamba 32), while Arnold lumbers in around 50 minutes, actually seeming to get more obstinately slow as it progresses. Worth hearing, but certainly not as an ideal representation.
There is a fine broadcast recording from 1991 by Sir Charles Groves and the BBC Philharmonic. One wishes that the BBC would put out a collection of Groves live recordings of Arnold symphonies. Slightly faster is Vernon Handley (Conifer/Sony), further destabilizing the atmosphere. Intriguingly and arguably recklessly fast is Rumon Gamba, who stepped in to finish the Chandos cycle after Richard Hickox’s untimely death. Perhaps in a less reverberant acoustic, Gamba’s performance might work, because its sheer energy is addictive. But in Chandos’ classic epic sound, details are blurred to the point where if you don’t already know the work, you won’t be able to tell what is going on. Still, an intriguing performance.
In the end, it is again Andrew Penny (Naxos) who finds a balance while still ranging the spectrum from delicate magic to aggressive onslaughts. No other recording makes the cowbell interpolations sound so powerful. Surely the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland had to go buy a new one after this recording presumably put dents in the bell!
Symphony No. 8
While the Seventh might contain more outright violence, the Arnold’s Eighth Symphony proves even more volatile and unpredictable. The work keeps a poker face while quoting an Irish-style tune in the first movement, taken from a film score that the composer was also working on during this period of personal instability. Is it ironic? Is it a reference to the composer having moved to Ireland in an attempt to find peace and stability? Or is it simply a good tune he wished to use again? The context offers no easy answers, for much of the rest of the movement contains some of the most chromatic and serial passages Arnold ever wrote, some of which continues in the background as the cheerful tune progresses naively. The andantino slow movement starts off subdued. The ominous atmosphere is only briefly cracked by a magical passage in the middle of the movement before a single, brutal climax. The last movement starts as one last breezy Arnold finale, though it soon twists into disturbing tangles. Cheery one moment, desperate or desolate the next, the movement closes abruptly.
The Eighth was the only one of Arnold’s symphonies to be premiered in the United States, by the Albany Symphony. An aircheck of the 1978 premiere can be found online, and the orchestra’s commitment and polish are impressive, as is Julius Hegyi’s conducting. Alas, the start of the off-the-air tape misses the very opening, and the recorded sound is not very good, further distorted by broadcast compression. For those reasons, it must be named as a miss, which is a shame, because what can still be made out was that this was an exciting performance.
The 1981 live recording by Sir Charles Groves and the BBC Philharmonic offers the expected insights this conductor and orchestra bring to Arnold’s music, though the in-your-face recording can be trying in some of the dissonant brass passages in the first movement, at least in the copy that can be found online. Vernon Handley’s performance (Conifer/Sony) is impressive, recorded in much better sound. There is also an aircheck from 1984 with the BBC Scottish Symphony, which also preserves Handley’s approach, but the sound is considerably inferior. Rumon Gamba’s is strong, again at a faster-than-usual tempo.
Andrew Penny once again claims the prize on Naxos, giving the piece more balance and coherence than any other with at times slightly more spacious pacing, though he shrewdly judges where to hit fast and hard. The recorded sound is the best of any rendition out there, making it a solid first choice.
Symphony No. 9
Arnold’s Ninth almost didn’t make it to us. Post-breakdown, Arnold wrote the piece in a three-week burst of activity. When the head of Faber Publishing, Donald Mitchell, saw the score, he paged through it, looking at page after page of mostly rests and said, “Where’s the music?” He ended up refusing to publish it. The BBC likewise balked and declined to have it performed in 1986, when Arnold finished it. Indeed, the textures are stark, rarely exceeding two-part counterpoint, as if the composer no longer had the patience to create the richly colorful textures he once did. The commissioners weren’t entirely wrong when they decided that the frail composer was now working at diminished capacity, but they didn’t account for the fact that diminished or not, Arnold was still capable of bottling lightning. The piece almost falls into the category of “outsider art,” it is so restricted in texture. But that doesn’t preclude eloquence. The first movement starts wistfully, though it eventually wends its way into futile fury. The second movement offers a calm but lonely melody, simple yet unforgettable. The third movement summons one last boisterous scherzo, marked “giubiloso” in the score, though it proves more anxious than joyful. It is followed by a stunningly bleak yet stoic slow movement finale that runs as long as the three preceding movements. In places, it seems to pause, panting, before a new wave of grief wells up and crashes upon us. The spell only releases the listener in the closing bars, which tremulously turn from minor to major, an exhausted benediction.
I will put one recording in the so-called “miss” category, but the truth is, it is actually worth hearing, even if it doesn’t displace the top contenders. John Gibbons conducts the Liepaja Symphony in an intriguing performance on Toccata Classics. Now, a Latvian regional orchestra isn’t likely to displace the finest orchestras, and it doesn’t, but the fact that this conductor insisted on making this recording demonstrates a thoughtful commitment. Gibbons’ contention is that the slow finale is more approachable if taken at a flowing tempo, resulting in a timing of just over 17 minutes against Penney’s 23 minutes or Gamba’s 24. Gibbons demonstrates his point fluently, without convincing me that it’s better like that. There is something special about the way that Gibbons navigates the earlier movements, though, demonstrating assurance and skill in the piece. The album filler, Arnold’s comic Grand Concerto Gastronomique is a negligible attraction, though it is handy for completist reasons to have it recorded. In sum, while this recording might miss the target, it is well worth hearing for what it has to say about the Ninth, and we can only hope to hear more from these forces.
No one else offers the straightforward, plain-spoken conviction of Penny’s Naxos performance. Patient with the composer’s slowly developing structures, Penny gives the work the room to make its stark points. As a dubious bonus, the recording offers a perplexing interview where Penney asks discursive questions only to receive mostly monosyllabic answers from the composer. It’s a noble attempt at an interview, at any rate, endearing in its futility. Arnold had already said what he had to say in his music. Rumon Gamba’s take on the work (Chandos) is powerful and effective, with the slowest finale of any version. Vernon Handley’s (Conifer/Sony) is a bit less successful, feeling at times as if Handley is trying too hard to interpret the music, when it’s actually quite plain-spoken.
That we heard this piece at all is thanks to Sir Charles Groves, who refused to let it drop after the BBC refused it. Groves kept asking for opportunities to program it, and the BBC finally yielded in 1992, letting the conductor premiere the work in Manchester with the BBC Philharmonic (formerly the BBC Northern Symphony), an orchestra with a long allegiance to Arnold’s work. It’s little short of criminal that the broadcast tape hasn’t been remastered and issued publicly, for Groves’ deep love and conviction burns through every bar of this bleak, gnarled masterpiece. Fortunately, it can be found on YouTube on the Internet, which is crucial, because no other conductor has pulled such an unapologetically emotional performance from his players. Groves understands Arnold’s helpless grief and deeply fractured personality, and he lets it speak without hesitation. It is the performance which seals Malcolm Arnold’s status as one of the greats. For now, this composer’s symphonic cycle remains the territory of enthusiasts. But soon the entire world of classical music will lift Arnold to the Pantheon, where he belongs.
Summary
The cycle which comes closest to grasping Arnold’s intensity—from farce to fury—is the Andrew Penny cycle on Naxos. Many other cycles have important light to shed on these works, and the essential live recordings by Sir Charles Groves still await remastering and commercial release. Room remains, though, for a modern cycle to tackle these works and establish a new benchmark.