Vol. 5: The Mystic Trumpeter / Dies Natalis / Lumen in Christo / Lux Aeturna

Howard Hanson is well known as the modern American Romantic, during a time when Romanticism was a dirty work in the professional music world. This final entry, Volume 5 of Gerard Schwarz’s much lauded Howard Hanson series  on Delos , contains a mish-mash of orchestral works and symphonic choral works. With the exception of The Mystic Trumpeter, all of these same performances have been reissued across Naxos, so make sure to do a price comparison between them and these original Delos recordings.Dies Natalis is a 16-minute theme and variations with the added bonus of a familiar Lutheran hymn tune thrown in. This work is the epitome of Hanson’s innate sense of the bold and grandiose; his big tune is lush and satisfying, and alongside the chorale, is a strong source of drama. Each variation ratchets the tension and Hanson wanders into crunchy territory before releasing into his finale tunes. This recording uses the orchestral version which amps up the original wind band setting.The titular Mystic Trumpeter rides along the lines of Copland’s Lincoln Portrait & Canticle of Freedom and Roy Harris’ American Creed, all music featured  on Delos ’ Portraits of Freedom with Gerard Schwarz, Seattle, and James Earl Jones. The music is a bit subsidiary to the narration by Jones, particularly in the ‘Joy’ finale, but the choral music rises to the occasion. James Earl Jones recites Walt Whitman’s poetry well, although there really isn’t a lot of his presence, but he really comes into his own at the end.Hanson’s 21-minute Lumen in Christo, another choral work with orchestra, this time with just female voices, focuses on light and its biblical references. It ranges from primordial chaos to devotional peacefulness, and the choral style is pretty stylistic of mid-Century choral music - that of Randall Thompson and Ron Nelson. I don’t find this choral style too captivating; it tends to ramble without much strong resolution or melody making, but it is nonetheless beautiful music.Lux Aeterna is a 17-minute quasi-concerto for viola and it really lays out Hanson’s lush orchestral style, with nods to music of the past scattered throughout. The liner notes speak to Hanson’s love of the modes and chant from the Dark Ages and Renaissance in these last two works, and that aspect certainly has a strong presence here.Gerard Schwarz was a champion of rarely recorded American orchestral music during his tenure at the Seattle Symphony, particularly that of Paul Creston, Alan Hovhaness, William Schuman, and David Diamond, to name a few. Seattle sounds really good here; the strings are laid on thick for this Romantic-tinged music. The Seattle Chorale was never my favourite chorus, they have had some stinkers on record, but they are pretty strong and cohesive here, with a satisfying symphonic texture and scope.With such a hodge-podge of music from Howard Hanson, it is hard to say who will want this extra entry of his orchestral and choral music. One can easily hear much of his symphonic music on Delos or on Naxos, all from Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony (and Chorale). This particular recording provides the 15-minute Mystic Trumpeter, which wasn’t ported over to Naxos in its reissues.Regardless, I enjoyed all of this music, and aside from nitpicking the individual works, everything is performed excellently and the music is very appealing. Recommended.

I have quoted excerpts from Walter Simmons less-than-enthusiastic review of this disc, and several others, from Fanfare Magazine. Unlike Simmons, I have felt an emotional link with the music of Hanson for many decades. It has moments of tenderness, grandness, and some excess, but at the end of the day, this is a fine disc of, admittedly, some of the composer's lesser works, but any enthusiast of Hanson should not hesitate acquiring it."....With Hanson's music--the later works especially--so oriented around sonority and gesture, the quality of the performance--and of the recording as well--can make the difference between aimless and repetitive pattern-noodling and stirring epiphanies of exultation. Thus, despite an absence of true musical substance. Hanson's 1969 setting for speaker, chorus, and orchestra of Whitman's The Mystic Trumpeter makes a splendid impact in Schwarz's stunning performance, which features James Earl Jones's fiery declamation of those verses not given over to the chorus. Again there are self-quotations: from the Sixth Symphony in the passage concerning love, and from Chorale and Alleluia toward the beginning of the "culminating song." But Whitman's conceit of a ghostly trumpeter who guides the poet through glimpses of the various facets of life provides Hanson with an opportunity to suggest a rapidly shifting scries of moods and images, which he accomplishes with great vividness and color.Lumen in Christo was composed in 1974 for women's voices and orchestra. Drawing its text from a number of biblical references to light and containing explicit but well-integrated quotations from both Haydn and Handel, this ambitious work is probably the strongest fruit of Hanson's final decade. Its strikingly arresting opening is followed by a setting of "In the beginning" that sounds like a Gentile's answer to the first movement of the Chichester Psalms. The second half proceeds with a slow progression of simple musical ideas that could easily sound vacuous, but in Schwarz's radiant performance evokes a lovely, ethereal serenity." - Walter Simmons, Fanfare Magazine 1995----A Later comment from Fanfare Magazine (re the Naxos reissue)"...Lumen in Christo, commissioned by Nazareth College in Rochester, New York, in 1974, is inscribed "with variations on themes by Haydn and Handel." (When a friend once asked him to reveal which themes by Haydn and Handel were used, Hanson replied, "Oh, that's too much work!") Like Haydn's Creation, however, the opening is a description of chaos, followed by an a cappella choral passage based on Gregorian chant. An orchestral outburst, however, leads us into a more contrapuntal chorus-with-orchestra passage with an almost Carmina Burana-like feeling, which in turn is followed by an even darker passage mixing minor and modal chords. The liner notes indicate that the rhythm in this passage changes in virtually every bar: 3/8, 3/4, 3/8, 3/4, 4/4, 3/8, 2/4, etc. Soft, shimmering strings underpin the chorus in the ensuing section, which then moves into one of the loveliest themes in the work. This gentle ending of the first section continues into the opening of the second, based on verses from the prophet Isaiah. Darkly muted harmonies color the text "and darkness shall cover the earth," but the darkness lightens a bit in the text "And the Gentiles shall come to thy Light." Hanson then sets up a gentle pattern in 3/4 that sounds to the ear more of a rocking rhythm than a waltz (it might even be in 6/8, come to think of it, but I haven't seen the score). The echt-Gregorian passage returns, eventually morphing into a beautifully ethereal "Amen" and "Lux eterna." --Lynn René Bayley, 2012

「感動する曲」は世の中に溢れかえっているけれど「魂を揺さぶる曲」は数少ないのではないでしょうか。吹奏楽版もいいのですがさすがオケ、イントロ、最終章のコラールは鳥肌モノです。シュヲーツとシアトルのコンビネーションも秀逸。