The composer Howard Hanson
and Hollywood moghul Darryl F Zanuck
have something in common. They were
both born, with Zanuck six years the
younger, in Wahoo, Nebraska. Hanson
came of second-generation Swedish-American
parents while Zanuck was the son of
a hotel owner. Neither stayed long in
Wahoo. While Hanson may not have lingered
long in Wahoo his home town have honoured
him by restoring the family home at
12th and Linden Streets as a visitor
centre which is open June-August, Sundays
2-4 p.m. or by appointment. 402-443-4217.
Hanson studied at Wahoo’s Luther College
and received a diploma in 1911. Zanuck
died in Palm Springs in 1979 and Hanson
in Rochester NY in 1981. Zanuck was
pretty well universally known certainly
among English-speaking cinema-going
people. Hanson for a while, from the
1930s to the 1950s, was among the most
famous of concert hall composers in
the USA. Regrettably his music has made
little headway outside the States.
The first CD in this
invaluable set plays complete the three
works analysed by the composer on CD2
and also adds the Piano Concerto.
In the magniloquent language
of the first two symphonies the Merry
Mount suite's overture is opulent
with gongs and whooping and tolling
horns. The ambience established announces
the ungovernable passion that pulses
through this opera. The Children's
Dance is bright, Petrushka-like
and ends headlong at full tilt. The
Love Duet draws on the same language
and throbbing romance as that of the
Second Symphony. Like The Children's
Dance, the Prelude to Act II builds
quickly from innocence to a rapturous
Russian insistence and a melody worthy
of Borodin and Balakirev. The Maypole
Dances look back to Olde English
greenswards (much of this could at first
be by Holst) but the rhythmic patterning
is soon transformed into something more
Slavonic, sometimes more Sibelian and
corybantic as at 4:12 (tr. 4).
I doubt that you will
play the second disc all that often.
It's the composer talking to you about
orchestral technique. It's not hard
going or wearyingly didactic. Hanson's
manner is that of a rather severe uncle
... but one with a mission to educate
and an orchestra at his disposal to
illustrate points. This Hanson does
vividly. There is no condescension and
no jokes - apart from the one about
the oddly named english horn which as
Hanson says is neither a horn nor English.
After the preliminaries,
on the instruments of the orchestra,
Hanson then dissects three of his own
works - Merry Mount Suite, Mosaics
and For the First Time all
featured without spoken interruption
on CD1.
His illustrations are
telling and his commentary for Merry
Mount and Mosaics is purged
of musicological technicality. The sound
is stunning - especially to be relished
in the massed sonorous pizzicato of
the strings at tr. 4 at 1:45. The Merry
Mount suite analysis certainly adds
value to your experience of the suite
when it is played complete.
Hanson speaks of Mosaics
and the work's inspiration in the
Palermo Cathedral mosaics he saw while
studying with Respighi in Italy. He
talks us through each variation.
For the First Time
is a suite of childhood vignettes
captured while novelty lent them an
intensity soon to cloud with adult familiarity.
The talk does not follow the sequence
of the variations as played when the
work is given complete.
Mosaics is in
a single track of just short of 13 minutes.
Romance is here held on tight leash
and despite some of the old hallmarks
being evident the melodic material is
not quite as gripping as once it was.
The work was premiered by Szell and
the Cleveland Orchestra.
For the First Time
is a series of twelve miniatures.
Bells is contented and idyllic
- no wildly pealing carillon here. Tamara
and Peter Bolshoi is a grotesque
scherzo akin to Eccentric Clock and
Kikimora. Deserted House shows
us Hanson dancing gingerly towards dissonance
amid shifting clouds of string sonority.
Clowns and Dance make
play with pizzicato and modernity but
Dance develops ardently. Fireworks
recalls the étincellante
sparks and flurries of The Firebird
rather than Stravinsky's own Fireworks.
Dreams returns to the palette
of Hanson’s own Second Symphony and
the Beowulf Lament and had me
wondering whether the child was the
composer himself looking backwards at
himself looking forwards to those great
triumphs of the 1920s and 1930s. The
piece ends in contentment.
The Piano Concerto is
in four movements. The first opens with
reflective music similar to that of
Vaughan Williams' Fifth Symphony. This
is only a prelude, for the movement
soon develops a full pelt syncopated
wildness rattled through by soloist
and orchestra in the manner of Walton,
Lambert and Prokofiev. The following
andante molto ritmico and for
that matter the final allegro giocoso
is again propulsive and gripping.
This is music that is ruthless, jazzy,
similar to Gershwin in haste. It picks
up on the war-dances for which Hanson
was famed. There is a long andante
molto espressivo which has the calm,
cool and collected mien of the Finzi
Eclogue and the early section
of the Grand Fantasia. Like
the Second Symphony the concerto was
a Koussevitsky commission and in the
final movement Hanson confidently recaptures
the wild pulse of youth. In fact that
movement sometimes reminds the listener
of Shostakovich's second piano concerto
with infusions from Gershwin and 1920s
and 1930s Hanson.
Was it really almost
thirty years ago that I first heard
the music of Howard Hanson? A friend
had taped a miscellaneous BBC Radio
3 programme of American music. It was
broadcast one Sunday in 1971-2. Apart
from including Griffes’ Pleasure
Dome there was also the middle movement
of Hanson's Romantic. It was
the first time I had heard any Hanson.
In due course I got the Charles Gerhardt
LP of the whole Romantic Symphony.
Then having started my first qualified
job I threw caution to the winds and
ordered via the then Crotchet Records
mail order a batch of USA LPs selected
from a Schwann catalogue I had picked
up in a jazz specialist shop in Plymouth.
That bulky parcel came by surface mail
from the USA (I seem to recall the name
‘Harlequin Records’ as Crotchet’s US
suppliers). It included some fascinating
Hanson, Piston, Schuman, Hovhaness,
Harris and Randall Thompson. The Hanson
was the Mercury LP of the first two
symphonies - the same two tapes as appear
here. I played that LP to death and
came to know the Nordic complete
with one or two clicks and groove skips
as if those blemishes were integral
parts of the music. I was, and remain,
a resolute Sibelian; the music of Hanson
has some Sibelian resonance with a Tchaikovskian
pungency. It is highly emotional and
emotive music. If you know the history
of favourite works by Sibelius, Nielsen,
Peterson-Berger and others it should
come as no surprise that the Nordic
was actually written in Rome where he
was studying with Respighi. It was premiered
by the Augusteo Orchestra, with the
composer conducting, on 30 May 1923.
The recording here was made 35 years
later. It positively throbs with soulful
Scandinavian feeling. Hanson is no dawdler
and keeps the pressure on his players
who respond with the alacrity of an
orchestra that has grown up under Hanson's
shaping hands. The precision of the
final 'crump' of the Nordic is
deeply impressive.
The Second Symphony
is in the grand romantic manner with
melodic material to match. Just listen
to the horn 'fall' at 4:31 and the easy-does-it
solo that follows. This is Hollywood
before the grand Rózsa, Herrmann
and Korngold scores were written. Here
the accent is even more Sibelian. Hanson
wrote a gift of a tune in the first
movement and matched it in the tender
balm of the andante con tenerezza.
The strings glow with a Hollywood
sheen - ample in tone with only a feint
suggestion of ‘dated-ness’. The plungingly
bright allegro con brio is well
named with darting winds, commanding
brass (00.49) all grippingly exciting
(3.20). The reprise of the great theme
from the first movement appears at 5:20
and is a spectacularly moving moment.
Only Charles Gerhardt
(now on Chesky) has excelled the composer
in the Romantic although Kenneth
Montgomery (Arte Nova) is I think very
fine even when taken at the almost parodied
distended pace he adopts. Schwarz and
Slatkin each have their own strengths
but lack the belligerent passion the
composer brings.
The Song of Democracy
sidles modestly in. The singing
is well coached and marvellously clear.
The wild dance of 3.23 must have been
in Hanson’s mind for the scherzo elements
of the Sixth Symphony. There are some
Waltonian triumphalisms (3:52) and memorable
moments include the opulent and increasingly
urgent chiming obbligato at 10.03. If
we flinch and wince in the face of the
sincere sentiments on display here then
let us also recall works such as Ireland's
These Things Shall Be and wonder
if we have become too knowing ... too
cynical.
The Third Symphony’s
ruminative expectation is crowned by
starkly crushing brass statements seemingly
descriptive of some Nordic tempest.
The trudging and rushing forward momentum
(5:40) is explosive and propulsive.
Hanson superbly sustains, accents and
goads the progress of the music. He
also insists on some mice dynamic contrasts.
Sibelius 2 can be heard in those dynamic
pizzicato ‘rushes’ from the violins.
In the second movement softly chanting
woodwind gently launches one of those
long string melodies related to that
in the Second Symphony. In the third
movement there are echoes of Sibelius
3 in the chipper writing for woodwind.
This mixed with shadows of Sibelius
1 and the folk ‘stomp’ we hear in Peterson-Berger
and later in the symphonies of Hilding
Rosenberg. The finale is strident, gripping,
raw, dark and sinuously Nordic.
The Koussevitsky Elegy
is the most sincere and indomitably
built of all the works included here.
He owed much to Koussevitsky including
the commission for both the second symphony
and the piano concerto. Koussevitsky
also recorded the Third Symphony on
78s and this has been reissued on Dutton
in their Essential Archive series CDEA5021.
The Lament for Beowulf
dates from Hanson’s days in Rome and
his studies with Respighi. It is amongst
his most potently brooding works. It
carries all his irresistible fingerprints:
long-spun themes, gruff brass punctuation,
Holstian insistence from the drums,
taciturn majesty and string ostinati
with brass punch-syncopated above. At
13:19 there is a delirious counterpoint
rising to majesty and at 1630 a Neptune-like
evocation of eternity fades into mystery.
- This set merits success and I hope
that it will draw enough attention
to attract recordings of Hanson’s
complete opera Merry Mount;
we have Naxos’s 1934 historical
set but the work deserves much better
sound. In addition how about premiere
recordings of the Symphonic poem North
and West with obbligato chorus
(1923); Heroic Elegy for wordless
chorus and orchestra (1927); Songs
from Drum Taps, op.32, bar, chorus,
orchestra, (1935) (this was recorded
on Eastman Rochester Archives LP ERA1007),
Streams in the Desert, chorus,
orchestra, 1969 and New Land, New
Covenant, oratorio, 1976 Also
in the queue are the Symphonic
poem Before the Dawn (1920);
Exaltation, op.20, symphonic
poem for orchestra with piano obbligato,
1920 and Lux aeterna, op.24,
symphonic poem for orchestra with
viola obbligato, 1923.
The documentation by
Robert Layton is very welcome and offers
a fresh perspective. Where it scouts
on detail is in the factual background
to the works. On the downside the words
for the Lament of Beowulf and the Song
of Democracy are not printed. Atmospheric
studio and actualité photos of
Hanson and discographical detail will
warm the hearts of the most extreme
of anoraks.
Hearing this splendid
collection makes me regret even more
that Hanson’s recordings of the Fourth
and Fifth symphonies were not included.
He recorded No. 4 for Mercury and this
was issued on Mercury LP SRI 75107.
The very brief Fifth Symphony was issued
on Eastman-Rochester Archive series
LP ERA 1014. Hanson must have conducted
the masterful Sixth at least once but
so far as I am aware there is no recording
apart Schwarz’s on Delos and Landau’s
on Vox.
The sound throughout
this Mercury set is vibrant, wide-ranging,
always gripping, never casual - not
even in quietude.
For explorers this gives
the great works - the first two symphonies,
Beowulf and the Merry Mount Suite -
in definitive performances directed
by the composer. This is a splendid
and vibrantly played and recorded collection
for Hansonians everywhere.
Rob Barnett
Alfred Mouledous (piano) 
