Comparison Recordings:
Hanson: Symphonies 1 and 2; Song; Hanson,
E-RSO, Philips Mercury Living Presence
[ADD] CD 432 008-2
Hanson: Symphony No. 2, "Romantic,"
Hanson, E-RSO, CBS monophonic LP [OP]
Hanson: Symphony No. 2, "Romantic,"
L. Slatkin, St. Louis SO EMI CDC 47850
Hanson: Symphony No. 2, "Romantic,"
G. Schwarz, Seattle SO Delos DCD 3073
[OP. tape now owned by Naxos]
I loved the Romantic
Symphony long before I knew what
it was, as the opening crescendo served
as the sound track to "Rocketship
XM," one of the first science fiction
movies about a trip to Mars. The composer’s
monophonic LP for CBS was very popular
during the forties and fifties and came
as close as possible to making the composer
well known. His later (and earlier)
music was more conventionally modern
and of considerably less inspiration.
Much of it is worth hearing once or
maybe twice. Hanson was pretty well
known as a one-work composer most of
his life and that evaluation will probably
continue.
The Romantic Symphony
is a superb work, tending
to follow the early Dvořák mould
of theme-and-repetitions-in-different-colours.
Constructed entirely on two motifs —
a rising minor third scale, and a mordant
followed by a descending third, and
all possible inversions, permutations,
combinations, and concatenations
of these, including the arpeggiated
fifth and seventh — the composer creates
the impression of rolling waves of delicious
‘Rachmaninovskian’ melody, a knack he
could have learnt from Telemann. The
work is generally considered, along
with the Barber First and the
William Schuman Third, among
the very greatest* of the American Symphonies.
Lasting a full 26 minutes, it always
seems to be finished almost at once.
The fillers on the
disk are the inevitable ones, little
better than endurable, but nobody would
put up with a 26-minute CD. The First
Symphony begins with a vaguely Rachmaninov
sounding motif, but quickly moves into
the Chadwick-Loeffler-MacDowell-Griffes
mould showing just who were the composer’s
musical heroes. The "Song"
has nothing tuneful about it, being
a rather rhetorical choral setting of
some Whitman texts. This release is
unfortunately timed since Americans
preaching about democracy is the funniest
comedy act currently playing on the
world scene.
It’s nice to be verified
a prophet; it was in 1960 that I first
predicted in a magazine article that
these Mercury Living Presence tapes
would be made available some day in
three-channel sound, and here they are.
Three channels means just that; no rear
channel information, but an independent
front centre channel. What your surround
sound processor might make of that I
don’t know, because my sound equipment,
however many options it offers, will
not play an SACD in fake surround sound.
I am inferring from the various other
tracks what the perspective would be
like, and on that basis I suspect it
would be quite worthy. But you won’t
be interested in the three channel version
of this recording unless your front
speakers are large and all of equally
impressive quality, and then you will
have a heavily centre-weighted perspective.
If, like me, you have two really good
corner speakers with a dialogue speaker
for your centre channel, you will get
the best sound from the SACD two channel
version, and that sound will be very
fine indeed.
The Slatkin version
is excellent and in digital sound and
offers a much more interesting coupling
in the Barber Violin Concerto.
Mercury would have done better coupling
this Second Symphony recording
with their archive monophonic recording
of Hanson’s Fifth Symphony, a
much more worthy composition. However
for sheer sonic beauty, this SACD has
the prize for the present. Even though
I know the CD issue of these tapes very
well, at once upon listening to the
SACD tracks I heard new orchestral detail.
If Naxos should release the Schwarz
Seattle Symphony version on a DVD-Audio,
then perhaps we would take another look
at the ranking.
Even on my "C"
music system I could hear a slightly
improved quality to the CD tracks on
this Hybrid SACD compared to earlier
CD-only release. That is not by any
means always the case.
*Most critics add the
Roy Harris Third Symphony, but
I’m not convinced. The Ives Symphonies
are not rationally comparable to anything
else.
Paul Shoemaker
see also review
by Rob Barnett
Eastman School of Music Chorus/Dr Herman H Genhart
