ABSTRACT
The person who became Malcolm Arnold’s closest friend in Cornwall was the St Agnes-based artist Tom Giles. He had the idea to excavate an old tin mine and turn it into a concert hall to be called Wheal Music, a project which Arnold enthusiastically supported but which sadly came to nothing. The difficulties at home and the film commitments left Arnold little time for concert music and he wrote only two works this year. The Salute, although it requires forces that would have pleased Arnold’s great hero Berlioz, lasts only five minutes but it makes a splendid sound, which was captured by the BBC when they recorded some of the rehearsals for the work’s première. Arnold’s concerto used to be called – as it is on the manuscript – Concerto for Phyllis and Cyril until his publishers thought it would be more marketable as Concerto for Two Pianos.
