I came new to both these symphonies, written in 1973 and 1978 respectively, and they are not for fainthearts! Their only obvious affinity with the world of the good-natured Arnold Dances is the composer's enormously strong rhythmic sense and his brilliantly imaginative control of the orchestral palette.
The Seventh Symphony is dedicated to Arnold's three children, Katherine, Robert and the tragically autistic Edward; the composer has suggested that each is linked to one of the three movements. But this information is cryptic and we cannot make direct associations between music and individual. For whatever reasons, this is essentially a tragic and at times bitter symphony. The first movement opens with an angularly jagged theme on strings punctuated by deep brass; among the other basic material the ear also picks out a forceful repeating brass chord ostinato and a more characteristic Arnoldian whooping figure, though not a joyful one. But the dominating idea, which soon appears, is long-breathed and despairingly lyrical, heart-rendingly so when given to the strings. The complex development brings both a trumpet-led jazzy interlude, and a pungent rhythmic section with a distinct affinity with The Rite of Spring. The movement is long (16 minutes) but has a thrusting forward momentum which sustains its length.
The Andante is an almost equally long obsessive soliloquy of despair, dominated by the solo trombone, but with its dejected elegiac feeling carried onwards by other sombre orchestral colourings of strings, wind and brass. In addition it includes a somewhat oblique interlude with obbligato percussion effects. A sudden acceleration brings a burst of extreme hopeless, grinding dissonance, before the trombone takes over again hauntingly rather in the way Vaughan Williams features a solo viola. The finale opens with a restless, neurotic idea on strings, but soon there is a bizarre change of mood to introduce a six-eight allegretto of piping Irish folksy character. This lighter episode, however, is short-lived and the neurosis returns vociferously. Key moments of the work have been punctuated by the use of a ''Mahlerian cowbell'' (which sounds unlike either a cow or a bell) and this is used to bring the work to a sudden halt.
The opening of Symphony No. 8 is also dissonantly intimidating, if not quite so pessimistic as the mood of No. 7, and then suddenly there is another bizarre Irish whimsy (taken from a film score), a piquant marching theme, shining in innocence on the piccolo and harp. The development is improvisatory and quixotic and the Irish march dominates through a multitude of colour variants, towards the end returning sotto voce on lower woodwind timbres, and finally gently gleaming again on the piccolo. The bleak Andante which follows is not a cheerful experience. Its elegiac depression dominates throughout; but the finale produces, at last, the kind of irrepressible vitality that is more characteristic of this composer, when the vivid main idea is flung helter-skelter around the orchestra (it is especially spectacular on the horns). The secondary lyricism is much less emotionally stable, but there is a burst of exuberance at the close.
These two symphonies seem to be for Arnold what the Fourth and the enigmatic Sixth are in the Vaughan Williams canon. Both works are performed here with great conviction and fire, to say nothing of impressive orchestral virtuosity and, not unexpectedly, Vernon Handley produces readings of striking power and spontaneity, with a characteristic concern for detail. His handling of the mood changes in the first movement of the Seventh and the control of the long span of the same work's Andante are masterly, while the recording, produced by Andrew Keener in the Henry Wood Hall in London, is impressively spacious, brilliant in impact, rich in brass sonority (the tuba tells impressively) and truthfully balanced'