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 ...
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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recorded the works heard here for the Mercury label on LP, but this reading by Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony, originally made for Delos in 1988-1990 and reissued by Naxos in 2011, is one of the few CD originals available.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...
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