CHAMBER MUSIC OF MALCOLM ARNOLD The Ceruti Ensemble Guild Music GMCD 7216 £££ String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2; Quintet for Flute, Violin, Viola, Horn and Bassoon; Phantasy for String Quartet 'Vita Abundans' (World Premiere Recording); TPT 70' 37

Works of breadth and imagination with skilled performances.

There is an intensity about the first of Arnold's quartets that, for him, is slightly unusual due to its consistency throughout the work: from the sliding opening, through the edginess of the Vivace and the plaintive strains of the third movement to the finale, which slips away into the ether, there is no sign of optimism. It is the composer's mastery of texture that really galvanises the mood of the piece and in this respect one can hear a breadth of imagination that lifts it well above the mundane. The use of glissandi in the first movement and harmonics in the second have a sense of unease about them, a feeling that the Ceruti Ensemble convey with an unsettled energy that suits the music extremely well. It is in the third movement that the playing is at its most impressive, however. Here the expansive melodic lines are allowed to breathe, with a tone and sense of timing that crystallises their mournful character, and draws the listener towards the beautifully eerie atmosphere that ends this movement.

The second quartet, written more than a quarter of a century later, lacks the powerful impact of the first, yet is nevertheless a work of originality and great appeal. In particular, each of the four movements displays contrasting aspects of constructional technique that typify Arnold's ingenuity. As in many of his other works, some of the movements are broken into sections of differing tempi, a device that here works marvellously in the last, where the driving rhythms and scurrying lines suddenly broaden out into the closing Lento, as if sunshine has finally found a gap in the clouds and floods onto the ground below. These sudden changes of mood within movements are often tricky to bring off successfully in performance, but the players here are obviously well tuned in to the composer's intentions.

The seeds for both of these works can be heard in the other piece for quartet on the disc, the world premiere of Vita Abundans, which was written when the composer was twenty. Structurally, the short, linked sections – six in total – are bound together through common thematic material which provides sufficient cohesiveness to just about hold back the impression of a series of textural snapshots. Whether this makes the overall shape satisfactory, however, is debatable, and one gets the impression that the composer had not yet successfully managed to master his tendency towards condensed forms. That said, one is struck that Arnold has a clear sense of the textural possibilities the genre offers, something that doubtless spurred him on to write the two larger quartets. In this light, the piece is definitely worth a listen and the performers certainly give it their best shot. From the sultry opening melody, with its quasi-Latin flavours, through to the more manic passages in the second half of the piece, a sense of commitment pervades the playing.

The choice of work to complete the disc offers a contrast, especially through its unusual instrumentation, but also through its character, which is on the whole less troubled. The Quintet contains more of the light-hearted quirkiness that features in much of Arnold's work, including references to more popular styles of music, found throughout the final movement. The Ceruti Ensemble underplay the cheekiness of this movement somewhat, yet in doing so create a surreal charm reminiscent of Poulenc. The wind players put in superb performances and the quality of recording makes it even preferable to the Nash Ensemble's excellent reading of this piece (re-released on Hyperion CDH55073).

Anyone who considers Arnold's music to be frivolous should listen to the quartets played on this disc; free from the features that cause some to dismiss him out of hand they show a composer of doubtless skill, imagination and integrity.

Gavin Meredith