EMI's American Classics
series reintroduces some once familiar
material. For the present disc I recall
the 1976 LP that featured the three
Thomson works and much later, after
the world changed in 1983, the issue
of the Hanson.
Thomson is celebrated
through suites from films commissioned
by the US Department of Agriculture.
The Plow that Broke the Plains
is about the Dust Bowl and deprivation
in 1930s USA – social commentary on
an era vividly depicted by John Steinbeck
in The Grapes of Wrath. Thomson
uses folk material in much the same
sense as his contemporaries in Soviet
Russia. As was his wont he weaves
into the score suggestions of hymns,
folk song and dance (Cattle)
and dance-hall lowlife complete with
saxophone (Blues - speculation).
Both Prelude and Devastation
build a picture of the depredations
of over-harvesting, saturation cropping
and towering dust clouds bearing away
people's lives and livings.
The River was
also written for the film director
Pare Lorentz. The river in question
is the Mississippi and the first movement
recreates the atmosphere of the Old
South - cotton, slavery, the majesty
of the river and the river boats.
A cooling flute ushers in the melancholy
Industrial expansion in the Mississippi
river basin. This touches in the
popular Vaudeville details amid the
sadness. Soil erosion and floods now
seems remarkably contemporary. How
much has really changed since the
1930s? The score holds a mirror up
to society while recycling great swathes
of then-contemporary culture.
Marriner and EMI
use the concert versions of the suites
– as recorded by Stokowski on Vanguard
- with a larger orchestra. You can
hear the smaller more intimate original
and complete version on Naxos
who also stock a superb DVD including
the original films and much else.
Autumn, written for
Nicanor Zabaleta, is in four movements
no longer in total than a concert
overture. Salute to the Wind is
placid and sky-blue innocent with
a redolence of the hymnal. Dialogue
leaves the sampler behind and
glows and chimes with intimacy. Love
scene is tender. It is a delightful
work done with great attention to
emotional detail. Its last three movements
were arranged from Thomson’s Second
Piano Sonata.
This Hanson Second
is a mite cooler and broader than
the classic account from the early
1970s by Charles Gerhardt with the
National Philharmonic. Slatkin has
the music stretch and brood and gives
it a more epic stride but it lacks
the visceral heat and propulsion of
the spectacular Gerhardt.
Warm and leisurely, it is not without
excitement with its fanfares superbly
caught, its grandeur prominent and
its romance unabashed - as in the
sleepy central Andante. Things
do heat up and there is some real
crackling energy in the Allegro
Con Brio. The Saint Louis brass
give their all. I will admit that
Slatkin proves a doughty interpreter
in the tense yet slow pizzicato over
which the horns call out at 3:52 in
the first movement. It's different
from Gerhardt but very effectively
calculated and weighted to achieve
maximum effect. For now this is excellent
but if you get the chance to pick
up the Chesky version of the Gerhardt
then don't hesitate for a second;
it's music-making at white heat and
even outpoints the
composer's Mercury version. It
is long past time that some company
tracked down all Gerhardt’s recordings
(classical and film, RCA and Reader’s
Digest) and began issuing them in
a uniform edition. That they are absent
from the catalogue is a cultural mystery.
Thomson and Hanson
were two very different contemporaries.
Hanson the irascible romantic and
Thomson the sardonic commentator.
Hanson the luminary of the Eastman
School with a heritage in hundreds
of students and Thomson the clever
and sophisticated writer, practitioner
and opera composer.
There you have it:
lovingly done classic Thomson and
an expansive, handsomely recorded
Romantic.
Rob Barnett
Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra/Neville Marriner
(Thomson) 
