Lou Harrison: Seven Pastorales; Peggy Glanville-Hicks; Etruscan Concerto; Terry Riley: June Buddhas

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 performances by Maestro Davies and the work of pianist Keith Jarrett who is the soloist on Peggy Glanville-Hicks' Etruscan Concerto.

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

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

Contents

MHS Exclusive!

Peggy Glanville-Hicks: Etruscan Concerto; Harrison: Seven Pastorales; Terry Riley: June Buddhas from Mexico City Blues.

Keith Jarrett, Piano; George Brooks, Sax; Voices Saintpaulia; Geoffrey Fairweather, Director; Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra; Karen Kamensek, Assistant Conductor; Dennis Russell Davies, Conductor.