Roy Harris’ Third Symphony of 1938 (in one movement) remains one of the masterpieces of American music, and has had its champions over the years, from Serge Koussevitzky (who premiered and recorded it) to Leonard Bernstein (who recorded it twice) and Leonard Slatkin (once). But Harris wrote thirteen symphonies (plus one for voices only and the “West Point Symphony” for concert band), and only on rare occasions have any of them been performed, much less recorded, by major orchestras. Thus it is gratifying that Marin Alsop—whose Samuel Barber series for Naxos has been overall superb—is recording Harris. Her renditions of Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4 (the latter a choral “Folk Song Symphony”) with the Colorado Symphony have already appeared; now Naxos has released Nos. 5 and 6, plus a short bonus piece, with the Bournemouth Symphony in superb sound.

All the works on the present CD date from the War Years, 1941 to 1944, and certainly have a predominantly somber quality, though with moments of exultation all the same. To be sure, the same could be said for Harris’ symphonies of the 1930s. His musical style in the ‘40s, instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with the Third Symphony, features the “American” sound one also associates with Aaron Copland (say, the latter’s own Third Symphony), but the rich modal harmonies and the treatment of the brass in particular, plus a debt both to Sibelius (evolution of symphonic themes though fragmentary buildup) and Renaissance church composers (polyphony, antiphonal choirs), are distinctive of Harris. The CD offers the works in reverse order of composition, but I’ll comment on them from earliest to latest.

The worthwhile “filler” on the CD is Acceleration, a 7-minute work that starts out as a funeral march but—you guessed it—accelerates, though not to any extreme degree, as in, say, Honegger’s Pacific 231. It just becomes more jubilant and vigorous, with passages in 3/4 rhythm, and actually slows down at the end. David Truslove’s booklet note mentions that Harris revised the work in 1942 but presumably the 1941 original is being performed, since that’s the date attached to the title. He also mentions that the musical material was “recycled” in the Sixth Symphony, but I can’t help but ask if this is a mistake, since the second movement of the Fifth Symphony opens with the same funeral-march theme. (Perhaps there is more subtle use of the material in the Sixth.) Overall, I wouldn’t want to argue that Acceleration is a major discovery, but it’s a pleasant addition to the Harris catalogue.

The Fifth Symphony, premiered in early 1943 by Koussevitzky and his Boston Symphony, was dedicated to the U.S. ’s “great ally, the Union of Soviet Republics,” and broadcast to the Soviet Union as well as to American troops around the world. These circumstances indicate that the Fifth should or at least could be classified as a “War&rdqmore....

Review By Robert Moon,Audiophile Audition,June 2010

Johanna Harris, the wife of the American composer Roy Harris (1898–1979) once said that the song, “Don’t Fence Me In” “describes the prime basic law that governs my husband’s life.” Born in a log cabin in Oklahoma, Harris drew from cowboy songs, American hymn tunes and Civil War music, to write compositions that express the wide open spaces that are so typical of rural America. His music is tonal, characterized by long flowing contrapuntal melodies that are invigorated by dissonances, polytonality and irregular rhythms. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, taught at the Juilliard School, UCLA, and other universities. He directed the music section of the Overseas Division of the Office of War Information in 1945. Much of his output was forgotten in the American avant-garde domination of classical music in the 1960s and 70s, but it has re-emerged in the last few years, as tonality has re-established it’s rightful place as a force in the eclectic music of the 21st century.

The late Russian-born American composer and critic Nichoas Slonimsky wrote of Harris, “He has a natural gift for the melodic line, and his melodies are in the uncanny way reflective of the American scene without being literal quotations.” The two symphonies on this disc represent a musical picture of America in the years of World War II. Symphony No. 6 “Gettysburg” was written in 1943–4 and was dedicated to the “The Armed Forces of Our Nation.” The four movements use direct quotations from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address of 1863. Awakening’s long crescendo is magically inspired, using a vibraphone that adds brightness to the massed strings. Conflict’s truculent march rhythms descend into the chaos of battle, ending suddenly. Dedication is the emotional center of the work, as it movingly mourns the casualties of war. Affirmation patriotically concludes this compelling symphony. Acceleration (1941) is a one-movement, seven-minute work that is energetically American in the ‘Harrisonian’ mode.

Symphony No 5 exhibits “…qualities of heroic strength-determination-will to struggle-faith in our destiny,” the composer wrote. It opens with a declaratory first movement using horns and brass that characterize the “fierce, driving power-optimistic, young, rough and ready.” In the second movement, a somber dirge transforms into an uplifting stringed chorale. The composer’s colorful use of strings and brass make this the most dramatically potent movement on this disc. Tempo changes in the triple fugue of the final movement makes it a structurally complex and bold-spirited statement of the American character. The Fifth Symphony is a work of monumental directness and Marin Alsop and the Bournemouth Symphony fully express the wide range of moods from patriotic vigor to nostalgic tenderness.

The recording is clear, but lacks some of the vivid resonance that characterizes the music. This disc is a significant additiomore....

Review By Lynn René Bayley ,Fanfare,May 2010

Marin Alsop, another Naxos conductor I’ve always admired, simply outdoes herself here. Like so many modern conductors, she emphasizes well-balanced sections, a steady tempo, and fine dynamic contrasts, but unlike so many others she throws herself into the music. There is scarcely a moment in these works when she seems at an emotional disconnect from Harris’s message, and in the second movement of the Sixth Symphony, I swear to you, she makes this conventional CD sound like surround-sound SACD. The strings, brasses, and winds practically leap out at you from all directions. You simply won’t believe it until you hear it…

At a Roy Harris concert in New York that I attended in the mid-seventies, Harris’s former pupil William Schuman made a short speech in which he stated that the time had come for a modern integral set of the Harris symphonies. As of this moment, this has still not taken place, although Naxos seems to be working towards it and Albany Records has recorded several symphonies not yet done by Naxos. But there is still a ways to go and that makes this disc by Marin Alsop all the more welcome.

Marin Alsop’s previous Naxos coupling of Roy Harris’s Third and Fourth Symphonies with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra was such a perplexing let-down (the towering, single-movement Third receiving a real dud of a performance, impossibly low-key and flabby) that I approached this successor with some degree of trepidation. Both works were composed in the dark days of the Second World War and first played by the Boston SO under Serge Koussevitzky (stalwart champions of the composer ever since their triumphant January 1934 premiere of the First Symphony).

Zwei Kriegssinfonien von Roy Harris (1898–1979), einem hierzulande wenig bekannten Sinfoniker, hat Naxos in der Serie „American Classics“ veröffentlicht. Es sind interessante Zeitdokumente: Die Fünfte, „dem heroischen und freiheitliebenden Volk unseres großen Verbündeten, der Sowjetunion“ gewidmet, erklang erstmals 1943 in Boston unter Serge Koussevitzky mit Direktübertragung in den USA und in der UdSSR, die patriotische Sechste („Gettysburg“) von 1944 erinnert an Abraham Lincoln und den amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg. Die Militanz hält sich wider Erwarten in Grenzen. Die gemäßigt moderne Musiksprache zeichnet sich durch rhythmische Festigkeit und klare Linienführung aus, Transparenz ist oberstes Gebot (Naxos 8.559609)

The Fifth is certainly well worth hearing and the Sixth not far behind; with good performances and recording, this is clearly the next stop for those who have been taken with the Third.

Symphony No. 5 (1942) is a darker, heavier work—we are in the middle of World War II here—but the substance, particularly of the first two movements, is essentially melodrama, not tragedy. The third and final movement is a pleasant surprise, moving beyond melodrama to something more interesting that gets closer to the feel of Symphony No. 3, Harris’s most effective voice. The orchestration of this movement, which includes visits by piano and both snare and bass drums, is also more complex than most which precedes it.

The Naxos series of Roy Harris Symphonies has proved to be one of their more stuttering projects, certainly in terms of the discs’ appearance in the catalogue and the personnel involved. The original release dated from the time Naxos were recording in the Ukraine and featured the 7th and 9th Symphonies in 2002. The next disc appeared in 2006 from the Colorado Symphony Orchestra in the safe hands of Marin Alsop and contained his two most famous Symphonies—the 3rd and 4th. So, after another four year pause arrives volume three—also with Alsop but this time featuring her Bournemouth orchestra. Given that he wrote thirteen numbered symphonies which Naxos has promised to record, it is to be hoped that the current rate of two per four years will increase!

Intellectually even more than musically Harris is strikingly individual. He grew up far away from the hub of American music on the East Coast and was largely self-taught until, on the advice of Aaron Copland, he became one of so many American composers to make the pilgrimage to Paris to attend masterclasses from Nadia Boulanger. However, unlike many of his fellow students he rejected much of the neo-classical aesthetic she propounded and, pardon the pun given his farming heritage, ploughed his own furrow. On returning to the States his Symphony 1933 (in effect his first) became the first indigenous American symphony to be commercially recorded. His breakthrough work was his Symphony No 3 of 1938 and it remains his best known work by some distance. Certainly it is the work by which most collectors will know him. Apart from the 4th Symphony the other symphonies—and indeed any of his work—have been much more sporadically recorded. Currently, there is another slowly evolving Symphony cycle on Albany but how complete that intends to be I do not know.

Harris is one of those artists I find very hard to place in the pantheon of composers. Sometimes I find his music to be powerfully uplifting and emotionally involving and at other times opaque and dull. My instinct, and this really is born out of listening to the music and reading the brief biographical details, is that all too often he tries to impose rather grand extra-musical ideas on his work that he does not have the technique to pull off. To my mind the Third Symphony ‘works’ so well because it is pure music and concentrated into a compressed single movement form. Also, it is very clear that Harris was a man of considerable political ideals. He headed up several cultural delegations to the Soviet Union and was an admirer (as so many were at that time) of the perceived pure ideal of a socialist state. My guess is that he sought to copy the concept of the proletariat artist producing music for the masses. This also links in with another neat concept. Harris shared his birthday with Abraham Lincoln and given that Lincoln features specifically in two of Harris’s Symphonies (6 and 10) is it too much of a intuitive leap to suppose that he took the president’s words from the Gettysburg amore....

Review By Lawrence A Johnson,Gramophone,March 2010

Roy Harris’s little-performed wartime symphonies are given a chance to shine

Few works have dropped more precipitously out of favour than Roy Harris’s Symphony No 3. Premiered by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony in 1939, the Third quickly became a repertory mainstay and was regarded, with the Third of Aaron Copland, as the great American symphony, played and recorded widely. In recent decades, Harris’s Third has lost its standing, joining the ranks of other unjustly neglected works by Piston, Hanson and Diamond on the fringes of repertory.

Harris’s Third remains a masterpiece but the composer wrote 12 other numbered symphonies and at least five additional works he called by the same title. Some have been individually recorded but just as many remain in the shadows. Kudos to the indefatigable Naxos label for its commitment to recording new performances of all the Harris symphonies from various sources.

Symphony No 6, Gettysburg, comes first on the disc, understandably, since it is the stronger of the two works. Written at the peak of the Second World War—and also premiered by Koussevitzky—the symphony is an evocation of the crucial Civil War battle but was also written to serve as a patriotic tribute to the US armed forces. The opening movement, “Awakening”, has a slow, solemn horn theme that segues into solo violin passages, and fragments that coalesce and provide thematic material. The music becomes more assertive and impassioned, not without a bit of triumphalism—once recalls Samuel Barber’s dictum that no composer should write in wartime—which Alsop skilfully underplays. The second movement, “Conflict”, presents trumpets over dirge-like throbbing chords, with jagged horn fragments and angular driving music that comes to an abrupt halt. The slow movement, “Dedication”, is the heart of the work, where against insistent sustained As in divided cellos, double basses intone a long-breathed melody that moves to a solo violin. The finale, “Affirmation”, bestows a sense of solace and nobility with a very American period feel to the wind phrases, fortified with confidence by forceful brass and timpani. Alsop shows great sympathy for Harris’s tricky ebb and flow and this performance is unlikely to be bettered, yet even with the valedictory expression, the music feels rather lightweight and lacking in memorability.

The Fifth Symphony (1942) was inspired by the wartime US alliance with the Soviets. Harris’s patriotic sentiments are undoubtedly genuine, even if the dedication to “the heroic and freedom-loving people of our great ally, the Union of Soviet Republics”, is cringe-inducing in light of subsequent events. As in his Third Symphony, all of the thematic material stems from the stern opening theme, with a repeated-note horn motif derived from Beethoven’s Seventh. Even at just a concise six minutes, the first movement seems like thin stuff padded out with an ovemore....

Review By Gapplegate Music Review,February 2010

Naxos Records is in the process of releasing the complete cycle of symphonies by American composer Roy Harris. That can only be a good thing, especially if the present volume is any indication.

Harris’s (1898–1979) reputation as an important composer in the modern post-Ivesian mode seems to have waned sometime in the late ’50s, only to revive again in the past decade or so. Perhaps it was easy to take him for granted during a period where the very latest advancement of new music got fleeting, flavor-of-the-month attention at the expense of composers who weren’t radically breaking with tradition but nonetheless created a body of works that had lasting value.

I do not wish to imply that there isn’t much of lasting value in the more avant composers of that era, but that’s another matter. Harris was certainly one of those in the less sensational, less “advanced” category, along with Piston, William Schumann and a handful of others. His World War II Era symphonies were more overtly nationalist, at least in sentiment, than some of the earlier and later works. In any event they remain excellent examples of the Harris style, long unwinding melodies changing hands among instrumental groups, crisp, clear orchestrations, a bracing, restrained lyricism. Listen to the sonorous, majestic, martial strains remembered in solitude as worked out in the Second Movement of his Fifth Symphony if you need convincing.

Marin Alsop and the Bournemouth Symphony give carefully but passionately rendered performances of these works. The added bonus of the miniature work “Acceleration,” later reworked into the Sixth Symphony, gives a nice finishing touch to the presentation.

Highly recommended listening…

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Review By Cinemusical,February 2010

I am kicking off a more frequent number of classical music reviews thanks to Naxos whose discs tend to show up here infrequently as “best of the month.” Now you will be able to get a few more detailed reviews of more recent classical releases from the label. (Other labels interested in submitting music for review are invited to drop me an email.) In this case, we can embrace an opportunity to raise awareness of American music--a personal crusade of mine for years.

Roy Harris is one of our great American symphonists. That said his music is sadly relatively unknown unless you happen to catch a musical survey course that focuses on American music history. Even then he tends to be overshadowed by Copland and a fairly dismissive snobbishness in academia to the continuation of the Romantic tradition. His name tended to rest on two works. Leonard Bernstein championed the truly superb Third Symphony which has seen a good number or recordings over the years (at least one performance tends to stay in the catalogue. The First Symphony was introduced in Boston under Koussevitzky and that performance was captured on tape (though the beginning was frustratingly cut off) and has appeared on historic reissues. Fortunately, Naxos has stepped in to correct a musical wrong by providing what looks to be a slow general overview of his music in their American Classics series.

Naxos has released four of Harris’ symphonies on two discs. It was Marin Alsop’s, which included the aforementioned Third Symphony that began to give music lovers hope that more was to come. It has been a bit of a wait, but we now have the present release with recordings of two important symphonies from the early 1940s. The earlier release was with the Colorado Symphony. For this one, Marin Alsop returns to Bournemouth where she is conductor emeritus. Alsop was a protégé of Bernstein, so no doubt gained a love for these pieces from someone who definitely understood their musical value. Her sensitive performances are a welcome addition to the catalogue.

The disc opens with one of Harris’ most powerful programmatic symphonies, subtitled “Gettysburg.” This sixth symphonic exercise has a truly cinematic scope that rises to the surface in its fascinating depiction of battle in its second movement titled “Conflict.” Musical tone painting is a hallmark of this work which begins quietly in “Awakening.” This opening movement features a perfect encapsulation of Harris’ symphonic style with smaller motivic ideas presented out of a mass of swirling sound that grows in intensity. There is an almost Sibelian quality to the way these motives swirl together for a long thematic line that closes off the movement (similar to Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony). The tension of war shifts into an elegiac third movement, “Dedication.” An arch-like formal structure gives the feel of a spun out melodic idea as the movement opens which gives way to a gorgeously scored central section with woodwinds amore....

Review By Scott Cantrell,The Dallas Morning News,February 2010

Since the later 19th century, American composers have penned quite a lot of symphonies. And quite a few of them are worth hearing. But you’d never know that from the programming of U.S. orchestras, whose neglect of their symphonic heritage is a disgrace.

Born two years before Copland, Roy Harris is remembered, if at all, for the Third of his 13 symphonies. But the Fifth and Sixth, both composed during World War II, are striking and accomplished works. They sound a bit like Copland in his Americana vein, but craggier. Harris often borrowed from his own music, and he mined the seven-minute overture Acceleration for material for the Sixth Symphony.

Marin Alsop leads persuasive performances with England’s Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (where she was preceded by Andrew Litton, before he came to Dallas).

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Review By David Hurwitz,ClassicsToday.com,February 2010

This is an important release for collectors of contemporary American music. Roy Harris might best be thought of as a sort of “New World” Bruckner. His music is sometimes awkward, rhythmically clunky and unvaried, but also noble, searching, shot through with brass chorales and contrapuntal episodes, and ultimately uplifting. Both of these symphonies reveal these qualities.

No. 6, subtitled “Gettysburg”, despite the titles of its various movements (Awaking, Conflict, Dedication, Affirmation) is about as programmatic as Bruckner’s “Romantic” symphony. It works extremely well as absolute music. The same observation applies to the three-movement Fifth, which shares a very similar sound world. Both works were composed between 1942–44 when Harris was working at the peak of his inspiration.

Acceleration shares some thematic material with the Sixth symphony, and the title is deceptive. The movement hardly changes pace at all once it gets going, but as a seven-minute chuck of typical Harris it gets the job done nicely. To say that this music never has been better performed or recorded isn’t saying much, since it has received hardly any attention at all. Marin Alsop and the Bournemouth Symphony deliver heartfelt, sincere performances entirely in keeping with the spirit of the music, and they are very well recorded. I welcome this release with pleasure, and so will you.

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Review By Infodad.com,January 2010

Rachmaninoff’s warmth, expressiveness and death obsession (all those Dies Irae quotations) are temperamentally quite Russian. But there is also a strong—and surprising—Russian connection in American composer Roy Harris’ Symphony No 5. More properly, it is a Soviet connection: this is a war symphony, written in 1942, and it is dedicated (without a shred of irony, except in retrospect) to “the heroic and freedom-loving people of our great ally, the Union of Soviet Republics.” There is nothing sinister in this: the USSR was a crucial member of the Allies in World War II, bore the brunt of some of Hitler’s most brutal campaigns, suffered enormous casualties, and in triumphantly breaking the siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) gave the Allies an early foretaste of eventual victory. That the nation’s own brutal dictator, Stalin, killed more people than Hitler did was not fully understood until well after the war. And so Harris produced a dedication that was patriotic in its time for a three-movement symphony that has no apparent musical connection to the circumstances in which it was written. This fifth of Harris’ 16 symphonies is absolute music, its outer movements both growing organically from basic material presented at their openings. If there is a “war” element here, it is in the middle movement, which includes portions of a funeral march. The symphony also includes material from Acceleration, a single movement written a year earlier (1941) that Harris reworked when putting the symphony together.

A very different and wholly American war is the foundation of Harris’ Symphony No 6, “Gettysburg.” The work, although entirely instrumental, was inspired by quotations from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Its four movements bear titles relating to that famous speech: Awakening, Conflict, Dedication and Affirmation. But, as in his previous symphony, Harris delivers absolute rather than program music in Symphony No. 6. There is some tone painting of war in the second movement, but this is more a filmmaker’s idea of war than Lincoln’s: the movement starts as a march and builds steadily, featuring fragmentary brass themes and yawps before it ends abruptly. More obvious and less emotive than the other three movements, it seems oddly discordant—not in musical terms but in the way it communicates. The other movements have more of the Harris sound and structure, with the third movement’s quiet ending being especially effective and the coda of the finale wrapping things up colorfully. Marin Alsop, a champion of 20th-century American music (and generally a more effective conductor of it than of the standard repertoire), approaches these Harris pieces with a sure hand, building them effectively and maintaining a clear sense of their structure throughout. The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra plays well and idiomatically, showing Harris to be, if not a great composer, one with a strong sense of style and considerable skill in orchestration.

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Review By Robert R. Reilly,InsideCatholic.com,January 2010

I will briefly reach into an earlier period of America music to let you know about the new Naxos release of Roy Harris’s Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6, with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, under Marin Alsop (8.559609). This orchestra proved its chops in playing American music with the stunningly good performance of \ Giannini’s Symphony No. 4, reviewed last year. This time American conductor Alsop takes on Harris’s two wartime symphonies from 1942 and 1944, Nos. 5 and 6. Credited with writing the great American symphony, his Third, Harris (1898–1960) suffered from the reputation of being a one-work composer. It’s a scandal that all of his 13 symphonies have not been recorded long ago, though Naxos has stepped into the breach and is in the process of recording them.

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Review By Jeff Simon,The Buffalo News,January 2010

Roy Harris, Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6 performed by Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop (Naxos). He was born on Lincoln’s birthday and he never seemed to tire of ways to embarrass symphonic music. At first, in the ’30s and earliest ’40s, a wildly idiosyncratic composer who had been a farmer and once drove a milk truck seemed made to order for Depression and wartime America. But here we are, 67 years later, with a very strong 1942 Symphony No. 5 dedicated to “the heroic and freedom-loving people of our great ally, the Union of Soviet Republics,” and we’re in just as much discomfort as he provided in old age with one cranky opinion after another (all of which paled, of course, compared with the semi-rabid anti-Semitism of Carl Ruggles). Roy Harris was far from a “primitive” as some explicators would have it; he was a great and distinctively athletic prairie composer who could inspire others (the contrastingly cosmopolitan William Schuman) but remain inimitable. Alsop’s current efforts to record Harris’ unjustly neglected symphonies are tremendous.