Hanson's Piano Concerto with Firkušný

Howard Hanson made a long series of recordings of music by himself and other American composers for the Mercury label in the 1950s. The stereo recordings are fairly well known, mostly for their supposed audiophile qualities; the mono recordings less so.

I recently featured one of those early mono Mercurys, and the response was good. So I'll be revisiting some of the other LPs in Mercury's Modern American Music Series soon.

But first, one of the few recordings that Hanson and the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra made for Columbia, this one issued in 1951. The main item of interest is the conductor's piano concerto in its first recording, with soloist Rudolf Firkušný, who introduced the work with Hanson and the Boston Symphony in late 1948.

After an opening reminiscent of Hanson's second symphony, we quickly are off into territory that is more like Prokofiev, and none the worse for that, particularly with Firkušný in excellent form.

Hanson's Mercury recordings were all-American, but here he backs up his own music with that of Grieg -not the most vibrant Holberg Suite in my experience. I suppose the connection is Nordic (as the cover suggests). These recordings have not been reissued, to my knowledge.

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