Roy Harris' Folk-Song Symphony

This interesting LP was transferred as the result of a request. It is a 1975 recording of Roy Harris' Folk-Song Symphony (Symphony No. 4), in a very good performance by the Utah Symphony and Utah Chorale under Maurice Abravanel. 

The symphony - really more of a choral suite - consists of settings from American songs collected by John and Alan Lomax's Cowhoy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads and Carl Sandburg’s American Songbag. It is a very enjoyable, and little known, example of Americana, dating from 1940. The release was timed for the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976.

Roy Harris

The work had been recorded once previously, by Vladimir Golschmann and Viennese forces in 1960 - but has not been revived for recording purposes, to my knowledge. I have the Golschmann LP if anyone is interested.

Like the Schubert one-act operas I have uploaded and a few other items, the Abravanel album is apparently SQ-encoded, but I haven't had quad equipment for a long time, so I can't confirm that.

Maurice Abravanel

Maurice Abravanel (1903-93), who led a fascinating life, was conductor of the Utah Symphony for 32 years, until 1979, when he retired. He made many recordings with the ensemble, whose profile he raised immeasurably.

Here's what Robert C. Marsh had to say about the Harris LP in High Fidelity: "British composers can write extended works for chorus and orchestra, call them symphonies, and get away with it, but I sense that this Roy Harris score has been needlessly put down over the years because of the presence of 'symphony' in its title. In the classical sense it is not a symphony at all. Folksongs do not invite thematic development and variation, and Harris is more interested in preserving the identity of his material than in treating it the way Beethoven treated that waltz by Diabelli. The idiom is the American nationalist style of the '30s and '40s. and you might mistake this for a Copland score of that period, since both men were working in this spirit.

"The songs are all familiar, and the settings are craftsmanlike, sensitive to the texts, tasteful, and well-scored ... This is not great music, but it is thoroughly respectable music in terms of its limited artistic goals, and in a performance and recording of this quality it should see you through '76 and beyond with some pleasant moments." Nearly 50 years hence - approaching the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding - this disc and the music hold up well.

If you are interested in such Americana, I recently posted an LP of music by Alec Wilder - his Names from the War and Carl Sandburg Suite, the latter also inspired by the poet's American Songbag. 

LINK to Roy Harris' Folk-Song Symphony

New Remasters of Roy Harris' Music

I've newly remastered three significant LPs of Harris' music, as follows:

Harris - Symphony No. 3, Hanson - Symphony No. 4

This 1953 LP features Howard Hanson and the Eastman-Rochester orchestra in convincing performances of Harris' third symphony - generally considered his best - and Hanson's own Symphony No. 4.

LINK

Harris - Symphony 1933 and Symphony No. 7

Classic performances of the Symphony 1933, in the 1934 recording from Boston and Serge Koussevitzky, coupled with the Symphony No. 7 from Philadelphia and Eugene Ormandy, in a 1955 recording.

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Harris - Piano Fantasy, Abe Lincoln Walks at Midnight

Recordings from 1955 with Johana Harris in the Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra, conducted by Izler Solomon, and Nell Tangeman in a setting of Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight.

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