Howard Hanson - Symphony No.4 "Requiem" - Suite from "Merry Mount" - Lament for Beowolf - Serenade for Flute, Harp and Strings - Pastorale for Oboe, Harp and Strings

This Delos disc from 1991 was one of my first Hanson acquisitions, and a great one at that. Delos and Gerard Schwarz (and the SSO) did a tremendous service for Howard Hanson fans across the world with the magnificent series of Symphonies, Concertante, Choral and other works that they recorded in the late 80's and (mostly) the early 90's.

Symphony No. 4 "Requiem" (1943)

Hanson regarded this deeply-felt elegy for the dead as one of his favorite works. Entirely orchestral, it is cast in four movements, the titles of which are taken from the Requiem Mass. The first movement is turbulent, romantic and reverential; a Kyrie theme alternating with dance and song-like sections and a chorale statement from which develops a storm-tossed, timpani-pounding coda as though suggesting the conflict between good and evil. The second Requiescat (Largo) movement is a softly ascending processional that is most affecting; the brief Dies Irae is a fast and ferociously bitter scherzo, while the Lux Aeterna (Largo pastorale) has some of Vaughan Williams's luminous mysticism as it sings eloquently and majestically of simple but strong piety. A most unusual but engaging work.

Lament for Beowulf (1925)

On a trip to England, Hanson came across and was very impressed by the epic poem Beowulf believed to have dated from 700 A.D. He began sketching his Lament in Scotland in "an environment rugged, swept with mist, and wholly appropriate to the scene of my story... My intention has been to realize in the music the austerity and stoicism and the heroic atmosphere of the poem.." Hanson wrote.

Beowulf is the nephew of the King of Geatus (now Sweden) who defeats a ferocious monster but ultimately pays for its destruction with his life. The Lament, scored for choir and orchestra, is about the people's grief over Beowulf''s death. The Seattle Symphony and Chorus vividly and movingly depict the hostile location, the grieving people and the scene where they are gathered around the hero's funeral pyre. The opening is thrillingly evocative with horns and trumpets calling across the soundstage over cavernous bass drum beats, low bass string ostinatos and snare drums. A magnificent work.

Serenade for Flute, Harp and Strings (1945)

Written as a wedding present for his wife, Margaret Elizabeth Nelson, it is quietly, dreamily romantic. Quoting the booklet, "The work's chief voice is the flute which unspools long flowing melodies to the harp's rhythmic obbligato. It's gentleness notwithstanding, Hanson gives the Serenade a propulsive dynamism that carries the listener with the inevitability of a flowing brook." Soloists Judith Mendenhall (flute) and Susan Jolles (harp) capture its magic beautifully.

Suite from the Opera "Merry Mount" (first performed 1934)

Hanson's opera and most ambitious work, Merry Mount, is based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, The Maypole of Merry Mount. It is a story that is anything but merry. It is a tragedy set in a Puritan town in old New England and it is about a pastor's obsession with a visiting Lady and the unleashing of his repressed hedonism. The Overture, using modal writing, is austere befitting the Puritans but the second movement, "Children's Dance" brings a relaxation and the music becomes syncopated and much more colorful. The lush romantic music for "Love Duet" has throbbing bass and percussion to signify the Pastor's growing desire for Lady Margaret Sandys, and it reminds one slightly of Bernard Hermann. The Prelude to Act II and The Maypole Dances use original themes and modes to depict the erection of the maypole, a pagan totem that scandalize(s) the Puritans. The music becomes more sensuous, reflecting the abandonment that leads Pastor Bradford to murder. Schwarz relishes all his expressive and dramatic opportunities. Enjoy!

Hanson_Symphony_No.4_Lament_Merry_Mount_Suite_Tz.zip

http://www67.zippyshare.com/v/49014746/file.html

**In Memoriam/Happy Birthday: Howard Hanson (b. Oct. 28 1896), the Great American "Romantic"**

Howard Hanson is one of the first American composers that I really feel in love with, around the same time that I had discovered and also fell for the music of composers such as Hovhaness, David Diamond, Paul Creston, Roy Harris, William Schuman and so on. I was enchanted after hearing Hanson's "Merry Mount" Suite (from the Opera of the same name) on the radio, I think it was during my first year of college. Soon after I bought every Hanson recording I could find; once I listened to the Symphonies, "Lament for Beuwolf", "Song of Democracy" and others I was a full-blown Hanson addict, past the point of no return. Hanson was born on October 28, 1896 and died Feburary 26th, 1981.

Composer, teacher, and one of the most influential musical figures in the United States between the world wars, Hanson wrote in an unabashedly Romantic idiom influenced by his Nordic roots. Of particular importance to the composer was the music of Sibelius, however he also acknowledged the influence of composers such as Palestrina and Bach. Hanson was born in Wahoo, Nebraska and although an "American", his parents settled in the states from their home country of Sweden prior to Hanson's birth. Hanson studied early on in New York with conservative composer Percy Goetschius and at Northwestern University, outside Chicago. Somewhat of a compositional prodigy, he received his first academic appointment, not yet 20, at California's College of the Pacific. He became an academic dean at 23. Hanson's early compositions made him, in 1921, the very first recipient of the prize of the American Academy in Rome. In Rome, he studied both orchestration with Respighi and the great Renaissance and Baroque Italian painters and sculptors.

In 1924, Hanson became director of the Eastman School of Music, building that school into one of the best conservatories in North America. During his tenure there Hanson continued to compose prolifically; he also embarked on a career as a conductor, in which capacity he proved himself one of the great champions of American music. At Eastman, it has been calculated, he presented some 1,500 works by 700 composers. Hanson also commercially recorded a number of modern works in a series for the Mercury label in the 1950s, drawing much attention to otherwise neglected repertoire. He also founded an important annual festival of American music, with performances both of contemporary composers and of composers of earlier generations. As a conductor, he developed a particular interest in the "Boston School" of composers – John Knowles Paine, George Whitefield Chadwick, and Horatio Parker among them.

Hanson's early music combines elements of Jean Sibelius, César Franck, and Claude Debussy, but to list these influences to a large extent misses the point. Early work like the "Concerto da Camera" for piano quintet (1917) has interest but great awkwardness as well. Hanson hit his mature style in the Twenties with such work as the "Symphony No.1" "Nordic" (1922),  the String Quartet of 1923, "Lament for Beowulf" (1925, and one of his most powerful scores), and the "Organ Concerto" (1926). None of these works show much trace of the new Modernism of Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith, Arnold Schoenberg, or Béla Bartók. Hanson remained pretty much outside mainstream Modernism, with a sound and idiom instantly recognizable as his own. Many criticized him as musically reactionary, and yet his music could not have been written in the Nineteenth Century. There's a directness and concision, an avoidance of padding, more in keeping with Twentieth-Century ideals. His harmonies belong mainly to him, and he retained an interest in chordal combinations and odd scales to the end of his career. Hanson's music in the Thirties consolidated his musical discoveries with his opera Merry Mount (1933, another very powerful score, deserving revival), Songs from "Drum Taps" (1935), and the "Symphony No. 3" (1938). The Forties brought about a restlessness in Hanson's idiom, as if he had found himself in a bit of a rut and wanted to get out. The idiom becomes harsher and the architecture more concise and more dependent on short thematic cells rather than on full-blown themes. Works of this period include the "Symphony No. 4 "Requiem" (1943), the "Piano Concerto" (1948), and "The Cherubic Hymn" (1949). The Fifties and the Sixties – inaugurated even more experimentation: "Fantasy-Variations on a Theme of Youth" (1951), "How Excellent Thy Name" (1952), "Symphony No. 5 "Sinfonia sacra" (1954), "Mosaics" (1957),  "4 Psalms" (1964), "Symphony No. 6" (1968), and "Young Person's Guide to the Six-Tone Scale" (1972). Needless to say one of Hanson's best loved and most beautiful  works is his "Symphony No.2  the "Romantic"

From the mid-Fifties on, Hanson's music began to disappear somewhat from concert programming. He still received prestigious commissions, but critics began to lose interest, particularly as post-Webernian serialism came to the fore. It was with those Mercury-label recordings (of his own music as well, along with many products of the Eastman School, and his beloved American late Romantics) that Hanson remained well within the radar of American musical life. All of these recordings have become complete classics.

Hanson considered himself a Romantic, and although a committed advocate of all stripes of Modern American music, he nevertheless avoided both neoclassicism and dodecaphony in his own work. Because of that, he became a kind of poster boy for those who kept wanting young composers to write the Bruckner Tenth. Hanson found himself caught a little in this, going so far as to subtitle his Second Symphony (1930) the "Romantic" and to consider it a manifesto of sorts. Hanson produced no heirs. His music remains unique to him, which is one of the best things about it.