Customer Reviews

Hanson Conducts Ives, Schuman & Mennin

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Howard Hanson finds so much in these works that when you compare them to other performances you think you're listening to different works.

This is particularly true of the Ives. No one conducted Ives like Hanson who, as an eminent composer himself, had unique insight into how Ives's mind worked. Voices, rhythmic patterning, tones, piled up and juxtaposed sonorities, the whole rich pallete is laid out for your delectation. Hanson is in no way picayune, either. He has a brilliant argument going for Ives as a classicist as much as a modernist. There is no other recording of the third symphony as full and rewarding as this.

The Schuman is another American standby that gets the revelatory Hanson treatment and is all the better for it. Often, when you do get to hear it, it's treated as an occasional piece, a patriotic "historiograph" or impression for us to enjoy and forget. After Hanson, you don't forget it...it's a first-rate work that you want to hear over and over with its evocative colors and straightforward, artistic honesty. You almost feel that Schuman could have reworked it into one of his beautiful and powerful symphonies.

And the Mennin is just that, compelling, powerful, beautiful. The ERSO outdoes itself with heft here, without overdoing it. Mennin propels everything forward and is extremely economical with his ideals. Hanson shows you how it all fits together without it seeming like a lecture-recital. Mennin usually didn't get such probing performances of his works, and after listening to this, you bemoan the fact that he died a few years back at just 51 years old. We were lucky to have him.

Add this beautiful Mercury to your carefully chosen collection of fine American music. You will find it wears very well and that you gain something more from it every time you put it on.

The Third is the most charming of Charles Ives' four "official" symphonies; one imagines the French would have been able to perform it - & loved it - during the 1920's. Subsequent research & a better sense of Ives' "sound" cannot be altogether discounted when listening to Hanson's committed 1959 performance; James Sinclair with the Northern Sinfonia on Naxos has a lighter & more deft touch that I believe is closer to what Ives heard in his head. But the inclusion of "Three Places," William Schuman's "New England Triptych," & the rugged Symphony no. 5 by the somewhat neglected Peter Mennin make this a classic classical album. Mercury's close mic "Living Presence" recording is better heard on speakers than through earphones, & was a sonic wonder of the era.

This recording is in superb Mercury sound, supervised by Wilma Cozart Fine; founder of Mercury Records.
This is a recording company that people have come to respect.
There is no finer recording of Ives' "Three Places in New England" or "Ives Third Symphony" than that conducted by
Howard Hanson.
The performance of Peter Mennin's Fifth Symphony, conducted by his teacher, Howard Hanson, is simply thrilling.
This is one of the finest recordings of American orchestral music.