A Grand, Grand Overture, Op.57

A Grand, Grand Overture owes its unlikely existence to Gerard Hoffnung, the uniquely gifted artist and humourist who made an inspired speciality of the comic potential of the orchestral concert – not only in his affectionately drawn cartoons but also in the two notoriously successful Hoffnung Festival programmes he devised for the Royal Festival Hall in 1956 and 1958. Written for the first of those concerts, and thoughtfully dedicated to the late President Hoover, Arnold’s overture makes a prominent feature of three vacuum cleaners, a floor polisher and, among more conventional percussion instruments, four rifles. Grotesque though it obviously is, not least when it comes to its “1812” ending, the score is remarkable also for its brilliant woodwind writing and its thoroughly distinctive tunefulness.