Arnold has often sought to create opportunities for instruments not normally associated with the concert hall, an extreme example being the "Grand Festival Overture" for full orchestra, organ, three vacuum cleaners, floor polisher and four rifles, duly performed in 1956 at London's Royal Festival Hall! The harmonica concerto—a much more serious attempt to blend unfamiliar sounds into an otherwise conventional ensemble—is dedicated to the British player Larry Adler. The smooth cantabile of the solo part is spiked up by unorthodox instrumentation, including passages where the harmonica plays counter-melodies with tuba and trombone. The runs, glissandos and fast staccato passages in the first movement take the concerto well beyond the technical limitations and sonorities of the humble "mouth organ" and require a virtuoso performer, which is probably why the Concerto is now rarely heard. In part of the slow movement, a Passacaglia in which a seven-bar theme is repeated seven times, each time a semitone lower, the harmonica is accompnaied by trumpets and trombones, a strangely potent effect.

© Roy Brewer, All Music Guide