Less than a year after the first recording of this culminating work in Sir Malcolm Arnold’s cycle of symphonies comes this rival version, providing a different slant, equally valid, on what, for all its simplicity of texture, is an enigmatic work. With a unique coupling of two oboe works, superbly played by Nicholas Daniel, it makes a formidable alternative, even though one has to remember that the earlier Naxos issue comes at super-budget price.

The contrast of recording quality, with the Conifer issue presenting the orchestra much closer, with textures made warmer and beefier, matches the broad contrast of interpretations. Where the slight distancing of sound on the Naxos issue keeps the music at one remove, the weight of sound which Handley draws from the Bournemouth Symphony in his fuller-bodied recording goes with a rather more expressive style, so that unison string melodies, as in the Trio of the third movement Scherzo or through the long, slow finale sound more obviously Mahlerian.

The result is that Handley’s version is not just warmer, it is less desolate in its presentation of that extended slow finale, almost all of it in two parts only, with the the two main contrasting themes hypnotically repeated. Both Handley and Penny sustain tension superbly, with the momentary modulation into the major (track 8, 7'36'') made just as easeful here as in the earlier version. There is much to be said for Penny’s balder, chiller treatment in music which, as the composer himself has explained, reflects a period when he had “been through hell”. With Handley the final brief resolution on to a major chord is all the more positive, where Penny leaves you more in doubt. Handley with his weight of sound clearly has some advantage in the swaggering Scherzo, the only movement which relates directly to our established image of Arnold, though Penny capitalizes on the way that his brass section rides over the slightly distanced strings.

What the new performance reinforces is the value of the work, defying the shameful reluctance of anyone to perform it over a decade, with the glowing exception of the late Sir Charles Groves. It may have looked very thin on the page, with so much argument reduced merely to two parts, but judging both by these recordings and live performances, it is a masterly conclusion to Arnold’s unique, keenly original symphony cycle.

The fill-ups are most welcome. The Concertino, not to be confused with Arnold’s Oboe Concerto, has been arranged by Roger Steptoe from the charming Sonatina for oboe and piano written for Leon Goossens in 1951, with a flowingly lyrical first movement, followed by a deeply melancholy slow movement and a jig finale, the whole piece lasting barely nine minutes. The Fantasia for solo oboe, written for a wind competition in Birmingham in 1966, makes one marvel at such variety over such a brief span with an instrument offering limited tonal contrasts.'

Edward Greenfield, The Gramophone, 4/1997