Howard Hanson, longtime director of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, wrote a good deal of symphonic music that was more frequently heard in the middle of the 20th century than it is today. His earlier music was influenced by Sibelius (anathema to the modernist nomenklatura), and with the continuing popularity of that composer his chief American disciple is worth exploring anew. His Symphony No. 2 in D flat major, Op. 30 ("Romantic"), kept enough of a hold on the popular imagination that it was swiped, without
Hanson's permission, for use in the film Alien; the aging
Hanson decided not to contest the issue in court.
Hanson himself recorded the works heard here for the Mercury label on LP, but this reading by
Gerard Schwarz and the
Seattle Symphony, originally made for Delos in 1988-1990 and reissued by Naxos in 2011, is one of the few CD originals available. The Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 22 ("Nordic"), was the work that made
Hanson's reputation when he premiered it in 1922. It shares a key and a good number of ideas with Sibelius' first symphony, with a craggy, brooding opening movement and a broad finale enclosing a melodious slow movement that feels like nothing more than an interlude. The first movement has a complexity of structure that takes it beyond mere imitation of Sibelius, and
Schwarz keeps impressive control of the trajectory at all times.
Hanson's themes in the finale are not quite as stirring as those of their model, and the choral Lament of Beowulf that closes at the album is pretty ponderous, but the Symphony No. 1 is a bona fide neglected American masterwork, a good find for Naxos' American Classics series.