Pianists Noriko Ogawa and Kathryn Stott joined the BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor Barry Wordsworth for a lively performance of Arnold’s charming Concerto for Two Pianos (3 hands) at this year’s BBC Proms. The piece was premiered at the Proms in 1969 so this was something of a ‘homecoming’ event.
‘The Concerto for Two Pianos (three hands) showed how this composer’s best music is a poignant mix of humour and darkness, often realised with inventive orchestration... he volley of timpani and brash, percussive strokes of the pianos in the first movement displayed Arnold’s prowess as a descriptive film composer, while the slow movement reached depths of expression...The finale was a riot, its rumba rhythms to the fore...
Classical Source (Ben Hogwood), 1 August 2013
‘When it received its première at the Proms in 1969, it was a great success – one of many three-handed concerti for the husband and wife duo of Cyril Smith and Phyllis Sellick (Smith had lost the use of his left arm after suffering thrombosis and a stroke in the preceding decade). It could be said that Arnold crosses the boundary between light and more serious music here: influences from the worlds of jazz and dance (rumba) and the Romantic era merge together in a style with an unquestionable bent towards the popular music of the day. The teamwork of piano duo Noriko Ogawa and Kathryn Stott was obvious, and their enthusiasm did not go unmissed by the orchestra, which responded with energy that had hitherto not been felt in this concert.’
Bach track (Julia Savage), 5 August 2013
‘The soloists here made the most of the unusual sonorities, revelling in the brittle tintinnabulation that the pianos and percussion set up from the start. A melancholy slow movement and rumbustious rumba complete the short work.’
The Telegraph (John Allison), 1 August 2013