We tend to forget in
this time of plenty how much Howard
Hanson did for American music during
the 1950s and 1960s.
This collection of
five discs presents a miscellaneous
assemblage of Eastman Mercury tapes.
There are twenty orchestral works here
ranging from symphonies to suites. The
big 20th century names are represented
by Barber (2 items); Schuman, Piston
and Mennin (one a-piece). These jostle
with Ives (two pieces) and, from yet
earlier generations, MacDowell and Chadwick.
All these items have been recorded in
more recent years although rarely with
such raw and vibrant engagement as by
Hanson and the Mercury team.
Apart from its documentary
and nostalgia value the set is valuable
for the rarities. The earliest is the
Johann Peter Symphony - an early Moravian
symphony. Later come the Moore, Phillips,
Rogers, Carpenter, Griffes, Kennan,
Bergsma, Gould and MacCauley. Many of
these, apart from the visionary impressionist
Griffes, might be said to belong to
the US equivalent of the Cheltenham
generation in the UK. So far the great
ruthlessly random sweep of history has
left them beached and desiccated. Some
of them deserve better: Bernard Rogers
for one. There are others.
Ives’ astonishing
and resolutely experimental Three
Places in New England were recorded
with the more convention-complicit but
still fresh Third Symphony at the same
sessions on 5 May 1957. They carry the
standard Mercury Living Presence auditory
signature - a close proximity to the
orchestra and a completely unapologetic
grip on the listener. This produces
a living presence indeed if hardly a
realistic concert perspective; not that
this is what we necessarily want anyway.
The Schuman Triptych is
a confident trilogy based on hymns by
William Billings but shrouded in Schuman’s
self-distinguishing originality. Have
the drum taps at the start of the middle
movement When Jesus Wept ever
rung out with such atmosphere and impact?
I think not. The strident woodwind of
the Chester movement have never
stepped out with such tautly bustling
muscle and imposing pep. This is a 1963
recording - the latest included in the
box. Then comes the 22 minute Fifth
Symphony by Peter Mennin with its tide-surging
energy at times like Vaughan Williams
(Symphonies 4 and 6) and Rubbra (Symphonies
1, 3, 4, 5). The central movement is
a typical Mennin Canto - he was
fond of the word and the mood. It is
not an easy cantabile. One gets
the impression that the right to sing
has been hard won and costly. The Symphony
was commissioned by the Dallas Symphony
and its premiere was conducted in Dallas
in April 1950 by Walter Hendl. The composer
set out to be direct and terse in his
communication perhaps a little like
Randall Thompson in his Second Symphony
although Thompson allows himself more
romantic breathing space than the athletic
Mennin. It has been something of a nostalgic
exercise to hear this version of the
Symphony again because the Mercury LP
SRI 75020 was an import purchase I made
into the UK during the very early 1980s.
I was struck then by the resonances
of the finale with the collana musicale
celebrations of the finale and their
unwitting linkage with Rubbra’s own
Fifth Symphony..
The Pulcinella-dry
clatter of the Capricorn Concerto
by Barber is accentuated
by this spry and close-up recording
from 1959. After such a start Piston’s
own much ‘wetter’ take on neo-classicism
is very welcome. Interesting to compare
the twelve movement ballet suite with
the fairground knockabout of Moore’s
Barnum Pageant. Of course the Piston
has the inestimable advantage of a classic
early Piston melody-bolero 1930s heard
in the Tango of the Merchant’s Daughters
and The Flutist echoing Ravel and Constant
Lambert’s Horoscope. That melody is
one for the scrapbook just like the
melodic coups he pulls off in the Second
and Fourth Symphonies. The Incredible
Flutist in this version is Joseph
Mariano. This is one of the most likeable
recordings I have heard. The Griffes
Poem again has Mariano in a work
poles apart in idiom from the Piston.
This is luscious, fantastic and dreamy
piece written at about the same time
as The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan.
The dedicatee and first soloist was
Georges Barrère. Kent Kennan
studied composition with Rogers
and Hanson at the Eastman. This was
recorded in 1957 and is prone to a rather
sharp ‘blade’ to the string sound. In
1936 Kennan won the Prix de Rome and
spent three years at the American Academy
in Rome. Kennan is very much the neo-classicist
with the suite studded with Stravinskian
tributes. Mariano takes centre-stage
again with McCauley’s Five
Miniatures for flute and strings.
This is a sincere, charming and poetic
suite with the flute musingly chaste
as well as excitable and flighty across
the five movements. This is a much more
personal and impressive work with some
of the mood pictures suggesting the
bleak world of Frank Bridge. Only in
the Capricious finale does McCauley
lose grip with some al-purpose Hindemithianisms.
Bergsma was a pupil of Hanson’s
at Eastman from 1940 to 1944. It was
Hanson who in 1942 premiered the suite
Gold and the Señor Commandante
(based on the Bret Harte story The
Right Eye of the Commander). Bergsma
is a substantial composer with a grand
imagination ands this rather Prokofiev-like
score prepares the grounds for much
more lyrical works such as his opera
The Wife of Martin Guerre - highlights
from which were issued on LP by CRI
but never made it to CD.
Chadwick’s Symphonic
Sketches take
us back to a Dvořákian style and
a pre-Great War innocence. This is matched
with the sentimental Elgar-Mendelssohn-Grieg-Edward
German style adopted by Edward MacDowell
in his Suite for Large Orchestra
which at times invokes the orchestral
suites of Glazunov (Middle Ages and
The Seasons). Hanson knows how
to pitch bouncy magic and high spirits
when called upon to do so as he is in
Forest Spirits and In October
from the Suite. Yet further back
in time we have the confident and streamingly
active classicism of Johann Peter’s
Sinfonia. Boccherini is mentioned
by Bill Newman in his note as an inspiration
but there is some Haydn in there as
well. Play this to your friends and
then tell them that this was in fact
written in Salem, North Carolina in
1789.
Morton Gould’s
1941 Spirituals for string orchestra
refers to the essence of the Negro spiritual
without actually quoting from any. The
first movement is tough - much tougher
than you may expect from Gould. Hanson
is good both in the serious almost dissonant
first movement as well as in the slightly
queasy A Little Bit of Sin. This
is a much more meaty work than I had
recalled. Having heard some of Gould’s
more over-the-top works this falls into
a quite different category. In 1947
Gould, inspired by the Lizzie Borden
story wrote Fall River Legend for
Agnes de Mille. The suite extracted
from the ballet was premiered in 1952
by the NYPSO under Mitropoulos. Once
again there are no lapses of taste and
the music is stimulatingly enjoyable
without being quite like anyone else.
The disc ends with Barber’s seven
movement Medea Ballet Suite -
with its sumptuous climaxes topped off
by drums, xylophone and magnificent
raw horns recalling the sound of the
horns in Hanson’s recordings of his
own first two symphonies. The ballet
was first written for Martha Graham
under the title of Serpent of the
Heart. When revived one year later
in 1947 it had a new title - Cave
of the Heart. The music is touching
(try the lovely Choros tr.15),
innocent, minatory and sinister (Medea
tr. 16).
Douglas Moore’s
Barnum Pageant is one of his
earliest pieces from 1924. It is a series
of character pieces encapsulating the
whimsical world of the Barnum spectacular.
The music is affectionate, at one moment
Petrushka puts in an appearance.
In the case of the Jenny Lind movement
the music is poetic with a tender melody
for flute and harp with strings. The
Circus Parade finale is suitably
ebullient. The recording is from November
1958 and has held up very well indeed.
The only pity is that Hanson did not
take up and record the In Memoriam of
1943 written in memory of the young
who died during World War II. Carpenter’s
Perambulator Adventures are similarly
relaxed and lyrically confident. They
date from 1914 and were recorded by
Hanson in 1958. There is a more recent
recording in the shape of the National
Symphony Orchestra of the Ukraine conducted
by John McLaughlin Williams on Naxos American Classics
8.559065. There the coupling is the
Carpenter’s two symphonies. The most
touching movements are The Lake and
the Rimskian Dreams; the most
lively Dogs and En voiture.
Bernard Rogers has the distinction
of being a pupil of Frank Bridge. We
need much more of him - I rather hope
that Naxos will record his orchestral
works. If we hear overt Russian influences
(especially Liadov, Rimsky and the Stravinsky
of The Firebird) in this masterfully
imaginative suite of fairy tales this
should come as no surprise. In 1925
he visited England and while there wrote
his First Symphony Adonais in
which Russian romance and Bloch’s impressionism
are strongly felt. He returned to the
fairy tale theme in 1939 with his own
Song of the Nightingale for Goossens
in Cincinnati. The Ride of Koschei
the Deathless is suitably dread,
skeletal and sinister emulating the
atmosphere of Liadov’s Baba Yaga,
Mussorgsky’s Night on the Bare Mountain
and Poul Schierbeck’s Häxa.
The drums and dry percussion are particularly
assertive. Burrill Phillips is
a really obscure character and not in
Rogers’ class at all. However his hick-sentimental
suite recorded in 1956 neatly matches
a sort of Delian continuum with a cartoon
ride for Paul Revere in the finale.
A demerit in this case
is the rather inadequate booklet note.
This is very strong on atmosphere and
period flavour but extremely poor on
details of the composers and the pieces
played. However the two photographs
of Hanson are stunning and unfamiliar.
The slightly cadaverous looking Hanson,
gimlet-eyed stares out at us pipe clenched
between his teeth at one point. This
contrasts with a photo taken perhaps
ten years later with the composer in
his early sixties and here caught smiling
avuncular with his once jet black goatee
now white but his hair still slicked
and black.
The price is certainly
right at £25.00 (just slightly over
bargain price). The discs are packed
reasonably generously with only the
third CD raising an eyebrow.
It’s just a pity that
Mercury were not able to license in
various of Hanson’s own self-conducted
tapes like the Merry Mount Suite,
Time and Again; the Piano Concerto
(with Mouledos) and the Fifth Symphony.
A major and very pleasurable
nostalgia trip for Mercury fans and
a chance for new listeners to get to
grips with the USA’s equivalent of the
Cheltenham generation with one or two
departures into earlier years all vibrantly
recorded. There are discoveries to be
made here. Hanson is still leading us
into the unfamiliar and doing so full
of enthusiasm and ferociously fine judgement.
Rob Barnett
Eastman-Rochester Orchestra/Howard Hanson 
