Hovhaness:Mysterious Mountain & Lousadzak/Harrison:Elegiac Symphony

Read About This Recording

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the American composer Lou Harrison formed a wonderful relationship with the Musical Heritage Society. It was in that era that the Society made a commitment to record some of Harrison's beautiful works. When Mr. Harrison died in 2003, the Society decided to remaster many of those recordings.

Conductor Dennis Russell Davies, a longtime champion of Mr. Harrison's music, leads these seminal performances and has paired them with works by other fine, but usually overlooked American composers, to give us a superb overview of this idiom.

In a New York Times review from 1986 the writer described Mr. Harrison's music as, melodic, consonant, colorfully orchestrated and easily accessible to a general audience while maintaining a certain fascination for the connoisseur. We couldn't have said it any better. These are not just modern works; they are compositions of great passion and ethereal beauty.

Though this tribute is to Lou Harrison, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the superb performance by Maestro Davies and the work of pianist Keith Jarrett who is the soloist in Hovhaness' Lousadzak.

Mr. Harrison's contribution to the repertoire is well documented on this CD and the Society is proud to be able to mark his passing with this offering.

-Jacob Anthony

Quotes

At last, someone has truly done justice to the music of Hovhaness and Harrison...the music, the sound and the performance create a profoundly moving listening experience. -CD Review

(His music is) serene and radiantly beautiful. -New York Times

Contents

MHS Exclusive!

Hovhaness: Symphony No. 2, Op. 132 Mysterious Mountain; Lousadzak, Op. 48; Harrison: Symphony No. 2 Elegiac.

Keith Jarrett, Piano; American Composers Orchestra; Dennis Russell Davies, Conductor.