There is an earlier
disc with Judy Loman, "Harp Showpieces"
(Naxos 8.554347 - review),
recorded in 1998 and also featuring
compositions by the three harpists Marcel
Grandjany, Marcel Tournier and Carlos
Salzédo. As far as I remember
it was well received and I have always
liked it a lot, returning to it quite
frequently when I want something soothing
and off the beaten track. The harp tones
are like balsam for a tormented soul
– or ear for that matter when contrary
to my wishes I have been exposed to
noise that some people persist in calling
music.
This new disc, which
for some reason has had to wait for
two years before being released, although
entitled "The Romantic Harp"
mainly draws on music from the latter
part of the Romantic period, much of
it written well into the 20th
century when new currents were permeating
the musical world. Grandjany’s Haydn
Fantasy was published as late as 1953
but it definitely looks back to long
bygone days and might just as well have
been roughly contemporaneous with "Papa"
Haydn. It is agreeable lightweight music,
easily heard and easily forgotten, but
extremely well played. Tournier’s Vers
la source dans le bois (Towards
the well in the wood), although fairly
short is an altogether more substantial
piece, held in a more impressionistic
vein. It was written in 1922 while Nino
Rota some twenty years later composed
his Sarabanda and Toccata in
a neo-classic manner. It is interesting
to note that interest in Rota’s non-film
music is growing. Gabriel Pierné’s
Impromptu-Caprice is the earliest
composition here and charming it certainly
is. His compatriot Fauré is the
oldest composer on the disc but both
his pieces are fairly late compositions.
Both were written originally for harp,
although Une Châtelaine en
sa Tour, written in 1918 for Micheline
Kahn, is based on one of his songs and
the somewhat earlier Impromptu,
Op. 86 certainly written as a harp piece
is more often heard in its piano version.
There are two transcriptions
here: De Falla’s Spanish Dance No.
1 from his opera La Vida Breve
is frequently heard in sundry arrangements,
most often I think as a vehicle for
virtuoso violinists in Kreisler’s setting.
Judy Loman’s version with its wider
palette of colours and dynamics comes
closer to the original. She manages
to integrate the whole orchestra in
her lush sound-world. Prokofiev wrote
his Prelude before WW1 when he
was still a young man, as one of a set
of ten piano pieces, but it was dedicated
to harpist Eleanora Damskaya and it
practically cries out to be transcribed
for the harp. This is Prokofiev at his
most romantic.
The piece by the Canadian
composer Kelly-Marie Murphy is the Cadenza
from the Harp Concerto that she wrote
in 2002 to mark the retirement of Judy
Loman as principal harpist of the Toronto
Symphony Orchestra, a position she had
held since 1960. Hearing this virtuosic
snippet one can only wish that Naxos
would be bold enough to record the whole
concerto, why not with the Toronto Symphony?
Finally Carlos Salzédo,
Judy Loman’s teacher, who wrote the
Ballade in 1913 and dedicated
it to his teacher, the legendary
Alphonse Hasselmans – Judy Loman certainly
belongs to a Royal Line of great harpists!
This piece needs a harpist of great
virtuosity, and that is what it gets.
Judy Loman shows here, and in the rest
of the recital, her superior technique
and her brilliant musicality, and since
the recording was made under the supervision
of Norbert Kraft and Bonnie Silver,
whose marvellous guitar recordings I
have often hailed in my reviews, there
is no doubt that this is a disc that
no lover of harp music should miss.
Keith Anderson’s booklet notes, from
which I have culled some of the background
information, are as usual helpful.
Göran Forsling
Judy Loman (harp) 
