Roy Harris: Symphonies Nos 5 & 6 [CD]

It's a shame really. The Bournemouth band are a terrific ensemble who have delivered some great discs over the last 50 years or so, and on a good day they can compete with the best orchestras in the world. And there isn't much in the way of competition for these Harris symphonies. But the whole venture feels lacklustre and uninspired - what should be imbued with the pioneering spirit of that great visionary Abraham Lincoln has been through finishing school and it just doesn't work for me. These works have to feel as if they've struggled to be born, they have to have massive energy, they need to power through to their flawed conclusions, rough edges and all, and to pull this off you need total conviction from your performers. These recordings feel drenched with Bournemouth drizzle, as if Sergio Leone had made "Once Upon a Time in the West of England".

That said, it's good to have a modern recording of the Fifth; the old Louisville effort under Robert Whitney was badly in need of an update. It's a problem piece, with the first movement feeling perfunctory at around 5 minutes in length, probably due to Harris cutting in down considerably in one of his revision frenzies. It makes for an odd upbeat to the big slow movement, which draws the best playing on the disc from the BSO.

The Sixth fares less well. The only other commercially available recording is from the Pacific Symphony under Keith Clark, and it's hard to see how this version from the early 1980s (I think) could be bettered - you just feel what Lincoln's first audience to the Gettysburg Address must have felt - inspired to be there at a moment of renewed hope after the bloodiest of civil wars. To be fair, Alsop matches Clark's new-dawn luminosity in the glorious opening movement, and the solo string players correct the Pacific team's unforgiveable intonation lapses. But the rest of this great work never gets going. The inventive finale, complete with a big triple fugue, percussive military marches, and the climactic bell-like tolling that ends the work, all just collapses in on itself.

What a pity. Harris deserves better, and Alsop should have been the one to deliver it - her commitment to bringing this neglected American repertoire to a wider public is second to none (will there ever be a better version of the Bernstein Mass?). But this disc isn't going to win many new converts.

There is no question that Harris' most famous and beloved symphony is his Third, which has already been recorded in this Naxos series that will possibly record them all. [[ASIN:B000EBEGZK Roy Harris: Symphony No. 3; Symphony No. 4 'Folk Song Symphony']. This disc presents his Symphonies Nos. 5 & 6 (but which are presented in reverse order).

Symphony No. 6, 'Gettysburg', (1944) was written in the midst of World War II at a time when Americans were very much thinking about martial conflict. The symphony is in four movements that limn the Battle of Gettysburg. The movements are called Awakening, Conflict, Dedication and Affirmation. And like good tone-poems, these movements really do create a picture in sound of those phases of the Battle, including memorialization of the dead and affirmation of the necessity of the conflict. Those familiar with Harris' Third Symphony will certainly recognize some of his musical processes used here. There are, for instance, two instances of building excitement via shortening note values and increasingly dense orchestration, a process heard to greater effect in the middle of the Third. One could not ask for a better performance than that given by Marin Alsop and the Bournemouth Symphony.

Included as the last track on this disc is a movement called 'Acceleration' (1941) that contains material later recycled for the 6th Symphony, much of it in the 'Conflict' movement. It is effective in its own right.

The Symphony No. 5 (1942) was written to honor the Russian people's resistance and ultimate victory over the invading Germans early in World War II. When the symphony was premièred by Serge Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony in 1943 it was broadcast both in the USA and in the Soviet Union. It is in three movements. The first movement, again reminiscent of the section of the Third mentioned above, grows out of a terse theme that is developed via the accelerando/crescendo technique already described. Another aspect of this method is the frequent brassy interjections of two, three, or four note motifs in quicker and quicker succession. The middle movement, itself in three distinct sections, begins with a funeral march and leads into a long section with divided strings playing a striving theme that then culminates in a chorale-like affirmation. The finale is contrapuntal throughout, again in some ways reminiscent of the fugal section of the Third, and it ends in a heroic section that recapitulates the thematic materials from earlier in the movement. On the whole, I must say, I prefer this symphony to the programmatic 6th. But both are strong representatives of Harris's symphonic oeuvre and both are given fine readings here. Recorded sound is quite good.

Scott Morrison