When I welcomed the composer's own recording of his Fourth Symphony, I quoted Andrew Porter's immediate response to its broadcast premiere in 1960: ''a symphony for fun... exuberant, melodious, unabashed, likeable''. Yet I found myself not wholly in agreement with him. Indeed although the work undoubtedly has attractive popular elements in its make-up, these two Arnold symphonies share comparatively little of the amiable optimism which distinguishes so many of his shorter works. Instead they reflect his experience of life over a broader span, with disillusion and even tragedy part of their symphonic ethos.
As it happens the Third Symphony does have an exuberant upbeat finale, but even here there is a last-minute change of mood in the coda, with a sudden Holst-like, plangent rhythmic warning; nevertheless the final few bars are distinctly positive. The work, commissioned by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society and first performed in 1957, produces a long, striking and expressively bleak string melody in the opening movement, while the despairing isolation of its Lento slow movement is similarly harrowing; both are played with moving expressive intensity under Hickox.
The first movement of the Fourth Symphony is dominated by one of those entirely winning Arnoldian lyrical tunes even though there is jagged dissonance in the central episode, and it has been suggested that this ambivalence was prompted by the contemporary Notting Hill race-riots, which also may have brought the Caribbean percussion instruments into the orchestra. These are often used aggressively, although the scherzo is chimerical. The slow movement brings another long-breathed, Arnoldian melodic flow, which recalls the Mahler of the First and Fourth Symphonies, although with more overt twentieth-century sensuousness. The finale, complete with fugue, has its bizarre, indeed riotous moments, including a curious march sequence, but finds a fairly satisfying resolution.
Richard Hickox has the full measure of both symphonies and the Chandos recording is superb, full of colour and atmosphere. The composer's own performance on Lyrita is unique and special, for he is an excellent conductor, but (judging from the photograph with the record) he was on hand when Hickox made the Chandos recordings and, without a coupling, the Lyrita disc is inevitably replaced by the new one.'