Lou Harrison: Solstice; Canticle No. 3; Ariadne

Read About This Recording

By the time of his death at the age of 85, Lou Harrison had become one of America's great legends. Coupling eloquent melodies influenced by folk traditions and an inexhaustible rhythmic creativity, he created a body of work that has inspired and delighted generations of audiences all over the world. In the great performances on this newly remastered CD, we are privy to his genius as a musician of rare delicacy and depth. If you looked for this CD in stores, you would be out of luck: it was recorded and produced exclusively for Musical Heritage Society members.

A Summerfield Set reveals Harrison as a composer of chamber music inspired by the Javanese gamelan tradition. Slow moving chords and easy, singable melodies are overlapped in a delicate web. The CD opens with a suite from the remarkably beautiful ballet Solstice for flute, oboe, trumpet, celeste, tack piano, string bass and two cellos. Dennis Russell Davies is the conductor of this world-premiere recording and helps balance the odd ensemble into a sumptuous, sparkling garden of sound.

The giant inventiveness, spaciousness and livelieness of this composer is nowhere more apparent than in the second movement of "Ariadne," a flute and percussion duet that has an ancient quality, like a glittering stream of light from a distant star.

—Joseph Colly

Quotes

"(Harrison's music is) serene and radiantly beautiful." —New York Times

Extended Article

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 and put them together in this Tribute Collection.

\ 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.

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

Contents

Exclusive!

Suite from the ballet Solstice; Ariadne for flute and percussion; A Summerfield Set for solo piano; Canticle No. 3.

Leta Miller, Flute, Ocarina; Nohema Fernandez, Celeste, Piano; Yvonne Powers, Oboe; Adam Gordon, Trumpet; Emily Wong George, Piano; Stephen Tramontozzi, String Bass; Lee Duckles, Peter Shelton, Cellos; Robert Strizich, Guitar; William Winant, David Rosenthal, Todd Manley, Scott Evans, Daniel Kennedy, Percussion; Dennis Russell Davies, Conductor.