John Puccio reviews ... (The Music).

Arnold: Symphonies Nos. 7 and 8. Andrew Penny, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. Naxos 8.552001.

Contemporary English composer Sir Malcolm Arnold (b. 1921) has written a multitude of film scores, and as a result he is often thought of a light-music composer. But his nine symphonies and many overtures and marches show us a musician who can move from the serene to the rollicking and from the sublime to the ridiculous in grand form. Arnold is a kind of throwback to another era, a Romanticist in the Modern Age, a man whose music can be serious but never self-righteous. That said, the two symphonies recorded here represent Arnold's more earnest and more darkly creative side.

The Seventh Symphony (1973) opens with a long, noisy, ominous movement that makes us wonder where its sudden jazz infusion comes from. It turns out to be a leftover from his Sixth Symphony, just one of many connections his admirers make in showing the coherence of the man's complete symphony cycle. The second movement comes out of left field with a beautifully evocative mood, followed by an odd, cantankerous finale. The much shorter Eighth Symphony (1978), 25 minutes long, is probably more characteristic of the man. It's sprightlier and more optimistic, although it, too, is filled with odd, sometimes discordant tones. Andrew Penny and his Irish players perform both works in precise terms, leaning heavily to clarification rather than overt dramatics.

Naxos provide a clear, true sound for the proceedings. This distinctness may come at the expense of a degree of brightness on some playback systems, however. The recording also provides a good separation of instruments, but this could also be interpreted as a degree of compartmentalization. In any case, I enjoyed the disc's sonic character, especially its lucidity, because it seems to me that Arnold's music could do with a bit of illumination. In all, it's a pleasant and in some ways stimulating musical coupling, framed in clean, modern digital sound, and costing a pittance. Interesting stuff.

Atterberg: Piano Concerto; Rhapsody; Ballade & Passacaglia. Love Derwinger, piano; Ari Rasilainen, Radiok-Philharmonie Hanover des NDR. CPO 999 732-2.

If the first few moments of Swedish composer Kurt Atterberg's Piano Concerto sound a lot like the Grieg Concerto, it probably isn't coincidence. Atterberg freely admitted an admiration for his fellow Scandinavian. Atterberg (1887-1974) is another of those artists whose works are important but seldom recorded. Perhaps they were only important in their time, and their time has come and gone. Nonetheless, it's lucky for us that companies like CPO (and Naxos and Marco Polo) are keeping lesser-known composers in the public eye.

The Piano Concerto is the focus of this disc, although it's preceded by a delightful little Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra that's full of exotic charm and followed by the Ballad and Passacaglia, equally brief (10 minutes) but equally fetching. The Piano Concerto of 1936, however, is foremost on the program and well it should be. Besides beginning with an homage to Grieg, it settles into a series of powerful statements of quite sophisticated, albeit slightly melancholy, orchestral proportions. This is succeeded by one of the most lovely (and again slightly melancholy) slow movements I've heard in some time. The finale, marked "Furioso," seemed to me a little out of keeping with its somewhat subdued antecedents, but it does ease up at the end. I admit I was not too impressed with a previous disc of this composer's Third and Sixth Symphonies (CPO 999 640-2), yet with because of the Piano Concerto's further infusion of folk and blues elements, I found it a minor treasure I'm glad I discovered.