Official website of Malcolm Arnold CBE

The 2007 Malcolm Arnold Festival was held at the Royal & Derngate theatre, in the composer’s hometown of Northampton, the weekend of October 6th & 7th. Director Paul Harris created for this year’s festival a brilliant skein of concerts and events, offering rare insights into Sir Malcolm’s glorious music.

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"NEWSFLASH! The 2008 Malcolm Arnold Festival will be taking place at the Royal and Derngate Theatre, Northampton, on October 18th and 19th. Details of the programme of concerts and events taking place over this Arnold celebratory weekend will be announced in due course".

Over the weekend, the impressive layout of the refurbished Royal & Derngate was home to an exhibition celebrating the life and times of the great composer, who sadly died on 23 September last year, only weeks before what would have been his 85th birthday.

A coach tour of Northampton started the weekend off on Saturday morning, 6 October, visiting those places in the town that had particular historic associations with Sir Malcolm and the Arnold family.

The concerts themselves began on Saturday afternoon, with Arnold’s music for his beloved brass: the Royal College of Music Brass Quintet performed the Quintet Op 73, Three Shanties, Fanfare for Louis, and the Brass Fantasies (for trumpet, horn, trombone, and tuba respectively).

In Derngate Underground 1, Arnold’s songs and incidental music for The Tempest were performed complete for the first time since the original Old Vic theatre production in 1954. The distinguished actor Robert Hardy, who played Ariel in the original production, introduced the concert, given by Kathryn Knight (soprano), Bethany Phillips (piano), and members of the superb

Northamptonshire County Youth Orchestra, conducted by Peter Dunkley. Linking the various movements of this work, Robert Hardy and soprano Kathryn Knight gave beguiling and powerful readings from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

The composer’s sister Ruth Arnold, who lived all her life in Northampton, was a highly talented artist and gifted poet in her own right. A fascinating talk given by Tony Meredith, MA’s biographer, and Penny Pullen, Ruth’s daughter cast light on her remarkable life. This event also included performances of several of Malcolm Arnold’s early songs, including Beauty haunts the Woods for which Ruth wrote the words. Ruth was the brilliant, jazz-loving, elder sister whom the young Malcolm “marvelled” at. A kindred spirit whose death, in 1966, left him so bereft.

The opening chamber music concert on Sunday 7th October included the Oboe Quartet, the Piano Trio, and the 5 Pieces for Violin and Piano performed by advanced students from the Royal College of Music. (A former student himself of the RCM, Malcolm Arnold won a scholarship to study the trumpet, piano, composition and conducting at the College in 1938 at the tender age of 16).

At mid-day the Derngate’s splendid new auditorium resonated to the sound of Malcolm Arnold’s Anniversary Overture, Little Suites 1 & 2 for Orchestra and Little Suites 1 & 2 for Brass Band by the Northamptonshire County Training Orchestra and Brass Band, under their conductor Peter Dunkly.

The composer and arranger Philip Lane then presented an illustrated talk on Malcolm Arnold’s film music. Philip Lane has, of course, arranged many of these film scores himself, including several that appear on the acclaimed Chandos CD, The Film Music of Malcolm Arnold, Volume 2, cat. 9851: Trapeze, Suite “No love for Johnny”, Suite “David Copperfield”, Ballade for Piano & orchestra from “Stolen Face” andPostcard from the Med. From “The Captain’s Paradise.”

Mid-afternoon on Sunday, Claire Dunham (piano), Sally Richardson (oboe) and Claire Fillhart (flute) – three fabulous musicians who collectively make up the ensemble Intriplicate - performed Arnold’s Clarinet Sonatina, Solitaire, Divertimento, Day Dreams, Two Sketches, Grand Fantasia, Oboe Sonatina and the Suite Bourgeoise.

Sunday afternoon’s Festival programme of events closed with a talk and a presentation of the poignant BBC Omnibus 1991 documentary on Sir Malcolm’s life by the film’s producer, Kriss Russman.
The gala evening concert in the main auditorium at the Royal & Derngate on Sunday 7th October, by any measure, was a remarkable occasion. Paul Mann conducted Jon Lord and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in a special recreation of the original Deep Purple/RPO concert at the Albert Hall.

On September 24, 1969, Malcolm Arnold conducted the RPO and the hugely successful rock group Deep Purple, in the premiere of Jon Lord’s Concerto for Rock Group and Orchestra. Arnold also went on to conduct the RPO in the world premiere of his own, profoundly moving, Symphony 6 – a major work in the Arnold oeuvre - in the second half of the programme. The juxtaposition of these two seemingly disparate pieces in the same concert – performed by musicians that hitherto would never have ventured into each other’s “world” – was in itself ground-breaking at the time. The success of Lord’s Concerto for Rock Group and Orchestra divided opinions across the more entrenched British music establishment in the 1960s. It was though, and remains, a seminal work.

A very real friendship between the two composers was forged during those heady days, a friendship that was to last until Sir Malcolm’s death in September 2006. The often-used labels of “serious” as opposed to “popular” music did not mean a great deal to either composer. What mattered was that the music was good. MA’s famous assertion that music is “ a social act of communication among people, a gesture of friendship, the strongest there is” held as true for that famous concert with Jon Lord, Deep Purple and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, as it did throughout his life.

Plans are now well under way for the 2008 Malcolm Arnold Festival, which will be held once again at the Royal & Derngate, Northampton, in October.

This year's Service of Thanksgiving, which commemorated all those musicians whose names have been inscribed in the Book of Remembrance, took place at St Sepulchre's, Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2DQ on 24 April at 6pm. Open to the general public, the service was conducted by The Revd. Alasdair Coles; the music was provided by the RAM Chamber Choir, directed by Patrick Russill and the address was given by the composer Dr John Rutter CBE.

Many of Sir Malcolm’s closest friends and family, including his grandchildren, attended this very special and moving occasion.

Founded in 1137, and described by Sir John Betjeman as "high, wide and handsome", St Sepulchre's is the largest parish church in the City of London. The Musicians' Chapel is situated in the North part of the Church where the ashes of Sir Henry Wood are laid to rest. (The laurel wreath placed around the bust of Sir Henry for the duration of the Proms season at the Albert Hall, comes back to rest above his tombstone at St Sepulchre's each year).

The Musicians Chapel contains stained glass windows in memory of Walter Carroll, John Ireland, Dame Nellie Melba and Sir Henry Wood, together with many other memorials. On the south wall of the chapel is the case containing the Musicians' Book of Remembrance.

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The 2007 Malcolm Arnold Festival

A summary by Edward Clark, Festival Producer

The 2007 Malcolm Arnold Festival