This is volume 5 in a series of American music conducted by
American composer Howard Hanson (see reviews of Volumes
1-3 and Volume
4) , XR re-mastered by Andrew Rose for his company Pristine
Audio. As such it is a valuable historic document. It shows
Hanson to be a fine conductor as well as composer and the orchestra
to be a distinguished one too.
“The American composer should not allow the name of Beethoven,
or Handel or Mozart to prove an eternal bugbear to him, nor
should he pay them reverence; he should only reverence his Art,
and strike out manfully and independently into untrodden realms”,
so wrote William Henry Fry in 1853. That was an early instruction
since it was Gottschalk (1829-1869) who was the first American
composer to achieve any kind of international fame. There is
no doubt that the instruction was eventually taken to heart
and I find American music has a very distinctive nature as one
should expect when one considers the melting pot that America
is. That said there are still traces of the origins of many
American composers in their works as I’ve pointed out
before in reviews of American compositions. This is the case
when it comes to the music of Howard Hanson whose parents were
Swedish immigrants (the subtitle of Hanson’s 1st
Symphony is Nordic) . However, this is also to be expected
and in any case makes for more interesting music than if every
composer there tried to purge any trace of their heritage in
everything they wrote. Therefore, one can hear Nordic sounds
in Hanson’s short Fifth Symphony, particularly in the
brass which he uses to great and powerful effect. This symphony,
because it is short, would be a great place to start for anyone
wanting to dip their aural toe either into American music for
the first time or into Hanson’s music in particular.
It is virtually impossible for anyone not to have heard American
music today as it’s all around us through television,
DVDs, internet and the cinema. Apart from films this was not
always the case and American composers were sometimes affected
by those sentiments that Fry advised they should not be. Even
in 1940 Copland felt driven to write that sometimes he thought
it would be better that the great masterworks didn’t exist
because of the negative effect they had on the public’s
response to “native” composers. You can sympathise
with that sentiment when you read that one criticism of American
music held that it was “plain fare from the farmhouse”
which is very similar to the criticism levelled at English music
as being “cow-pat music”. It only goes to show that
often the greatest criticism comes from people in the composer’s
own country. I’ve always found American music exciting
and different and usually brimming with a level of self-confidence
that is infectious. That is something clearly evident in Hanson’s
Fifth Symphony. After a brooding and ominous opening, that one
could imagine being used to great effect in an episode of “Wallander”,
the strings and harp introduce a more uplifting theme for a
short while. This is sustained until the brooding nature returns
before calm is once again re-established. In this short work
of less than 15 minutes there are no fewer than 14 changes of
tempo. So it is that, once again, the intensity builds up (from
around 8 minutes) before dissipating, only to be replaced by
massed brass reminiscent of the best Sibelian tradition. These
clamant voices gradually subside and the symphony finishes quietly.
Hanson’s The Cherubic Hymn takes its text from
the Greek Catholic Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. According
to Davidson College Presbyterian Church in the USA in an article
in their newsletter entitled “The Mystery of God in Music”,
“the music and text together evoke the mystery and transcendence
of God more completely than almost any music you will hear.”
Powerful it most certainly is with the music reaching huge climaxes
on several occasions along with the choir, The Eastman School
of Music Chorus. I found a review from Fanfare magazine
in which Henry Fogel said “... this does not seem to me
one of his strongest works. There is just a bit of the sense
of a contrapuntal exercise here, instead of the level of melodic
inspiration that marks his best music”. This concerned
a performance by Organ and Chorus as the present recording,
though he knew of it, was unavailable at that time. I suggest
that he gets himself a copy of this disc because I’m pretty
confident he’d change his view now.
After this Pristine presents Hanson conducting a performance
of Morton Gould’s Latin American Symphonette. He
takes four dances and treats them to a vibrantly imaginative
working. It begins with a fabulously energetic and exciting
Rhumba then a smokily sexy Tango followed by the Guaracha, apparently
Cuban in origin. It’s a little less frenetic than the
Rhumba but only just and that also goes for the last one, a
Conga that one can imagine snaking it way around a dance floor.
There’s a resting period in the middle before it resumes
its exuberant way towards a climax in which the sounds of massed
triangles can be heard. This is then subsumed by orchestra and
percussion before collapsing into happy exhaustion. This treatment
reminded me both of Copland and Bernstein who each wrote music
with a similar degree of almost electric energy: El Salon
Mexico and some of West Side Story.
The seventh track is of Barber’s Overture to “The
School for Scandal”. It was the 21 year old Barber’s
first orchestral work. What a fantastic debut it made for him.
It has become one of his most popular compositions. Such a work
promised much for the young composer’s future, one which
was well and truly fulfilled. The main theme which enters after
a short introduction is delicious and helps make it a piece
I’ve always loved. It is exciting and dramatic by turns
and shows that the then student was a name to watch. This was
proved by its being premièred only two years after it
was written in 1931. It was meant by Barber to reflect the spirit
of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s play of the same name.
This is followed by what must surely be Barber’s most
well known work, the Adagio for Strings. It has been
done no service by being recorded hundreds of times and marketed
on discs along with other such ‘romantic’ pieces.
This has happened so often that the poor piece has been done
to death in the same way as Elgar’s Land of Hope and
Glory. A huge number of people who don’t normally
relate to ‘classical music’ will know this work,
though perhaps not who wrote it. They will almost certainly
know nothing else by him. I do not want to sound either elitist
or smug. I want to champion this music I love and wish that
those who buy such discs were encouraged to go on to explore
other music, spurred on by how they related to this work, which
is a lovely piece. It could do with being “rested”
for a few years to avoid it being forever only
associated with the ubiquitous compilation album or feature
on certain radio stations’ “Peoples’ all-time
favourite” list. The final work is Barber’s short
Essay for Orchestra written in 1938 and performed later
the same year in a radio broadcast by none other than Arturo
Toscanini. This was a great honour for the young composer since
Toscanini rarely performed works by contemporary Americans.
It is known as his No.1 since Barber wrote two more Essays,
in 1942 and 1978. It is a work full of the effervescent nature
of Barber’s writing and a joy to hear.
Hanson was invited by George Eastman of the Eastman-Kodak Company
to head his Eastman School of Music, a post he held for forty
years. He was a great symphonist who made a major contribution
to furthering the noble goal of creating an “American
music tradition”. Inevitably, perhaps, that brought him
into conflict with those I call “the Emperor’s new
clothes brigade” and in his book Voices
in the Wilderness: Six American Neo-Romantic Composers
(Scarecrow Press, 2004) Walter Simmons wrote: “Achieving nationwide
acclaim while still in his twenties, he lived to see himself
marginalized during the last two decades of his life, because
of his consistent adherence to values and ideals, rooted in
the piety of small-town life in "middle America," that increasingly
seemed "old-fashioned" and authoritarian when seen against the
hard-edged intellectualism, anarchic radicalism, and sneering
cynicism of the 1960s and 1970s” (p. 111). Fortunately
for us all that time has now passed and we are able to see him
and a whole number of other composers for what they really were
and to enjoy their music as they hoped we would. This series
is a worthy one helping to achieve just that and Andrew Rose
has done a sterling service to both Hanson in particular and
American music in general by presenting these recordings to
a modern audience. The only criticism I have is that the insert
quotes from a review of the original vinyl disc but only in
respect of the Gould with no information about the other music.
He also uses half the space to explain the work he did on restoration
in which he said that more work needed to be done on the Gould
and Barber than on the Hanson which is interesting since I found
the Hanson sounded more dated than the rest. In any event it
is an extremely interesting disc that any fan of American music
will enjoy and would be a useful gateway into it for anyone
coming to it afresh.
Steve Arloff
The Eastman School of Music Chorus# 