A Gesture of Friendship

EARLIER this year, when Alan Poulton published his comprehensive catalogue of Malcolm Arnold's works, it brought home to many of us that Arnold's contribution to 20th-century music has been far wider than the relatively few performances would seem to indicate.

It is not all that often these days that one has the opportunity to hear in concert much else besides the familiar "Tam O'Shanter", the English Dances and the Three Shanties. But Arnold has been a prolific composer for more than half a century, ever since that first piano march, "Haile Selassie", was rejected by Boosey & Hawkes.

Arnold has now reached his Op.130, a Fantasy for solo cello, which was given its world premiere by Julian Lloyd Webber at the Wigmore Hall on Sunday afternoon. As a former orchestral player himself, Arnold has always been a sympathetic, but none the less challenging, instrumental composer. Brass and woodwind have attracted his particular attention (he was principal trumpet of the LPO), but it appears that this is only his second piece focusing on the cello (he wrote a Cello Duo in 1965).

The Fantasy is fairly short, just over a quarter-of-an-hour, but the 'concentration of idea is in itself intriguing, the exploitation of cello timbre resourceful but, again, indicative of an affinity with the instrument's "natural" voice, as he has called it. Not for him any distorting antics and scrubbing around above the bridge. This sounds like real cello music written for the cello.

Structurally, it is well proportioned, too, with a recurrence at the end of the bold, striding theme of the beginning, and in between an uninterrupted sequence of spontaneous invention (a brisk march, a jumpy vivace, a pizzicato serenade of arpeggios, a sighing lento) which draws its character from the cello's own sound quality and, for all its ease of flow, has a feeling of taut, considered planning. Arnold has always enjoyed 'communicating through music', which he has called a "social act" and "a gesture of friendship". This new piece certainly shows that he remains resolute in that principle.