Most helpful customer reviews
|
|
4.0 out of 5 stars
Here's the Roy Harris of the Third Symphony, Aug 10 2003
I've been generally disappointed by much of Harris' symphonic music after the triumph of his Third Symphony (which remains, after many years, one of my top-ten favorites, right up there with Mozart's 41st and Copland's Third). In these late symphonies, however, he got his act together again and we are presented with the same sonorous long-line -- almost Gregorian -- passages as in the Third, along with brilliant orchestration.The sound quality is not quite as good as usual on Naxos. Kuchar's conducting seems good to me, but I haven't previously been familiar with these pieces, so I can't be certain of that. As usual with Naxos -- a genuine bargain.
|
|
|
5.0 out of 5 stars
Naxos does it again, Jan 11 2003
Excellent budget compilation featuring two of Roy Harris's seldom-performed later symphonies (and one short symphonic poem inspired by the assassination of J.F.K.). For those of you who are unfamiliar with Harris, he's a very appealing composer. His music is populist, rather than avant-garde, yet he takes interesting liberties with musical form that we "longhair" types can readily appreciate. What's more, Harris doesn't shy away from patriotic American themes in his music; his Symphony no. 9, featured here, is based on the poetry of Walt Whitman _and_ the Preamble to the Constitution.Theodore Kuchar and the Ukrainian Symphony deliver a consistently high-caliber performance for this CD. The program is solid, the sound quality excellent, and the price unbeatable. Naxos American Classics has done it again.
|
|
|
4.0 out of 5 stars
Kuchar answers the, Sep 2 2002
This is a positive review (anyone who likes American music should buy this disc), which nevertheless takes up what I would call the "Harris Question." Precisely because the case of Roy (born Leroy) Ellsworth Harris (1898-1979) needs arguing, Theodore Kuchar's traversal of Symphonies Nos. 7 and 9, along with the "Epilogue," so called, to JFK's "Profiles in Courage," is welcome. It might seem peculiar that the argument for Harris as a significant creator of symphonies in an American vernacular should be taken up by a Ukrainian ensemble, but Kuchar's National Symphony Orchestra has already documented symphonic repertory by Creston and others. The orchestra is a good one and the conductor has a "feel" for the American sound; Kuchar, I believe, is American-trained. At one time it was a given that Harris was a leading light among American composers. Charles Mills, writing in David Ewen's 1942 symposium "Modern Composers," described Harris as a composer of "solid, block-like tonal combinations in heavily accented rhythms, and more often than not in asymmetrical designs," who in his Symphony No. 3 (1939) had produced a major work of "universal appeal... to musicians and laymen alike." The Third, Mills wrote, was "a sincere and important expression of intrinsic worth and meaning"; Mills went on to quote Serge Koussevitsky as saying that the Third represented "the first truly tragic symphony by an American." It is a fact that the Third quickly acquired and long held the status of the most performed symphony by an American. On the strength of it, moreover, Harris began receiving the commissions that eventually drew from him some thirteen or sixteen symphonies altogether, depending on who does the counting. (And incidentally made him a millionaire.) Yet, apart from the Third, who is familiar with any of Harris' other symphonies? Numbers 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 have been recorded, but remain less known than the symphonies of Schuman, Creston, Mennin, Piston, or Diamond. What is it in the work of these arguably lesser lights (Schuman was once Harris' student) that gives them more appeal posthumously than Harris? The answer is that Schuman's Third or Creston's Second or Mennin's Fifth, like Harris' Third, possesses real "symphonic impetus" or "momentum." Right away, the listener feels swept up in the forward motion of the music. It needs to be stated that, for Harris, "symphonic impetus" did not come naturally. One senses this immediately in Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6 (the latter subtitled "Gettysburg"). There are those impressive sonic "blocks" noted by Mills, but the music never advertises any particular destination, and the movements tend to cut off abruptly (and arbitrarily) rather than reach a convincing climax; the episodes are exciting but they don't add up. Until hearing Kuchar's performance of the Symphony No. 7 (1952, revised 1955), I would have put it under the same description. What Kuchar finds that escaped Eugene Ormandy in his old mono Columbia recording is - exactly - "symphonic impetus" and, so to speak, a "destination." In Kuchar's conception, No. 7 nearly matches No. 3 as Harris' most cogent symphonic score; by making the rhythms more plastic, he propels the music. The bitonal polyphony of chorales and canons, which makes for a superstructure unfolding over the repeated passacaglia theme, becomes, in this new reading, coherent and directed. The stereo sound also contributes to the effect. (Ormandy on Columbia, reissued by Albany, always sounded constricted and tinny to my ears.) We get the muscular "dance symphony" that Harris, in his own description of No. 7, apparently intended. Symphony No. 9, too, benefits by Kuchar's superintendence. A previous, recent recording on Albany under David Alan Miller made an excellent case, but I would laud Kuchar for taking the argument several degrees farther. The music is still more sectional than in No. 7, but Kuchar gives the three movements an overall symphonic "shape" that greatly benefits the whole. These works require a large body of strings with a plush sound, which the Ukrainians deliver. The atmosphere of the recording venue is conducive to the overtones that Harris' depends on for effect when he writes for vibraphone, especially prominent in No. 9. I would hope to hear more of Harris from Kuchar and his players. They would be able to make the case, if any one might, for Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6, the former dedicated to the (then) Soviet People. Recommended.
|
|
|
|
