Here is more enticingly off-the-beaten-track from this new super-budget label. The Fourth (Requiem) was apparently Hanson’s own favourite of his seven symphonies. Inscribed “in memory of my beloved father”, it is a darkly intense, neo-Sibelian outpouring which won the composer the first Pulitzer Prize ever given to music in 1944. The tuneful, opulently scored Romantic (No. 2) has understandably remained a firm favourite with American orchestras and audiences since its premiere in November 1930 under that indefatigable champion of home-grown music, Serge Koussevitzky. More recently, its use on the soundtrack of the 1979 feature-film Alien won Hanson an entirely new band of admirers. The Elegy (1956) is a supremely touching memorial to a close friend and great conductor to whom American music this century owes an incontestably profound debt of gratitude.
Performances are capable and shapely, and the sound is very good too. The Jena Philharmonic may not be world-beaters, but they respond with plenty of enthusiasm to David Montgomery who obviously knows his way round these scores. That said, there is nothing here which poses a serious challenge to Gerard Schwarz and the splendid Seattle Symphony in terms of orchestral finesse or interpretative insight: Montgomery’s provincial band inevitably don’t possess the ingratiating tonal lustre and sheer muscle of their American counterparts, while Schwarz’s direction displays just that little bit of extra commitment to the cause (Montgomery’s Fourth is uncomfortably hasty for my tastes, knocking a disconcerting five minutes off Schwarz’s total timing – 20'54'' as against 25'56'').
None the less, at its absurdly low price, I imagine this Arte Nova issue will find many new friends for Hanson’s ripely romantic vision. One final oddity: unless my ears are deceiving me (and without a study score to hand), the finale’s introductory bars are irritatingly foreshortened; as a result, we get only seven instead of eight swirls before the horns’ rousing entry – Montgomery’s doing or an editing slip?'