ProStudioMasters.com

Sir Malcolm Henry Arnold was an English composer. His output of works features music in many genres, including a cycle of nine symphonies, numerous concertos, concert works, chamber music, choral music and music for brass band and wind band. He wrote extensively for the theatre, with five ballets specially commissioned by the Royal Ballet, as well as two operas and a musical. He also produced scores for more than a hundred films, among these The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won an Oscar. The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) is one of five permanent symphony orchestras based in London. It was founded by the conductors Sir Thomas Beechamand Malcolm Sargent in 1932 as a rival to the existing London Symphony and BBC Symphony Orchestras. The founders' ambition was to build an orchestra the equal of any European or American rival. Between 1932 and the Second World War the LPO was widely judged to have succeeded in this regard. After the outbreak of war, the orchestra's private backers withdrew and the players reconstituted the LPO as a self-governing cooperative. On this seminal album, four of Malcolm Arnold’s great works are celebrated, with the composer himself conducting the LPO as they tackle the works effortlessly, with passion and finesse. Two of the works feature the London Symphony Orchestra being conducted by Nicholas Braithwaite, to allow for comparison and true appreciation of the breadth of reach that his great composer had.