Sir Malcolm ARNOLD 1921-2006

Few composers of the 20th century, and almost none of his generation, had such a gift of warm and immediate communication as Sir Malcolm Arnold. It made him an ideal candidate for recording, and even in the days of 78s, when he was still active as first trumpet in the LPO, Decca recorded his overture Beckus the Dandipratt in brilliant FFRR sound. From then on he was fortunate in having most of the many genres of music in which he was a master covered in fine recordings.

One of the genres that especially attracted Arnold was the concerto, and over the years he composed something like 30 examples, almost all of them inspired by the playing of particular performers. The Guitar Concerto he wrote for Julian Bream is especially memorable, including as it does one of his finest tunes, and among the other artists he celebrated was jazz trumpeter Benny Goodman. All those who inspired such works were invariably delighted at the way that Arnold understood the technical problems and possibilities of each instrument from the inside. Significantly, he wrote with confidence and immediacy, never needing to revise or go back, invariably producing scores of outstanding clarity and effectiveness.

It was remarkable that whatever genre he was tackling Arnold was immediately and recognisably himself. At a time when the majority of composers were seeking ever more abstruse styles, in effect communicating less and less widely, Arnold had no inhibitions about tackling every genre, not least the popular medium of cinema. His tally of film scores is phenomenal, and in 1957 his score for The Bridge on the River Kwai won an Oscar with its setting of the "Colonel Bogey" March. More recently, his film scores have been appearing in increasing numbers on CD, very successfully demonstrating their permanent value.

In much the same vein, warmly communicative, colourful and lyrical, came Arnold's series of English Dances (two sets), as well as Scottish and Cornish Dances. It is typical that with their colour and tunefulness, several of them became popular signature tunes for television programmes, as for example What the Papers Say.

All this might suggest an ebullient, extrovert personality in the composer, and up to a point that was so, reflecting the warm, clubbable man who enjoyed a pint at the bar. Yet as the sequence of symphonies increasingly revealed, behind the colour and warmth lay a darker side to Arnold's personality, reflected in such fine works as the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies. Though like the rest of Arnold's many-sided output the symphonies were regularly recorded, that popularity did not extend often enough into the concert hall, something which added to

Arnold's periods of disillusion.

Sadly, in his private life, those periods of self-doubt led to serious mental problems, culminating in 1979 in a period when he sought refuge from psychosis and manic depression by entering St Andrew's Hospital in Northampton, his home town. When he was discharged, he was given a room in the home of his social worker, but that was in a pub, which made drink all too readily available to him. When his social worker died, he soon found himself on the streets.

Luckily, through the agency of a BBC producer, Mike Purton, who had made a television film about him, he moved to a bungalow in the village of Atdeborough near Norwich. By happy chance he was then introduced to a neighbour in the village, Antony John Day, who, it emerged, was an ideal carer. That led to what became the happiest and most settled period of Arnold's life.

The romantic story has to be told of how the Ninth Symphony came to be written. It was the morning of Day's birthday, and he tacIded Arnold that he should write some music for him. Somehow it struck an immediate chord with the composer, who for a long period had been inactive. In three weeks, he had completed the three substantial movements of his Ninth Symphony. Mostly in only two parts, with the orchestration refined into total transparency, it may at first seem dangerously naive music.

That was how it came to be dismissed by a sequence of musicians to whom it was shown. Yet Sir Charles Groves spotted something more, and organised a run-through performance, which was recorded. Still it was ignored for anything more, but I remember playing the tape of Groves's performance and immediately being impressed by the directness and moving simplicity of the writing, in places like Mahler distilled. That coincided with the project to make the first recording — for Naxos with the Irish

Radio Orchestra under Andrew Penny. That led in turn to more recordings, thus resulting in three rival Arnold symphony cycles.

What emerges from the Ninth Symphony above all is Arnold's deep gratitude to his carer.

Though he himself was very firmly heterosexual, aggressively so earlier in his life, his response to the love he was shown by his gay carer, who eased every problem in his life from then on, is movingly revealed. Day naturally accompanied

Arnold to Buckingham Palace, for example, when in 1993 he was knighted — belatedly, many people thought. Other honours came his way too over those years, yet to the end he happily preserved his quiet country life with Antony John Day in Attleborough. Edward Greenfield