The world must be rather full of people who have been stirred and inspired by Roy Harris's magnificent Third Symphony but have ever since been disappointedly seeking its equal in the rest of his large output. One wouldn't expect the First Symphony to reach that hoped-for level, and it doesn't (it precedes the Third by five years, after all), but it deserves an occasional hearing and a place in the catalogue. Some of his invigorating vitality is there already, more than a hint of his ingenious way of building simple thematic fragments into impressive paragraphs; it already has the recognizable Harris sound. Both outer movements run out of steam before their codas are reached but the sparely-scored lyricism of the central andante, with its wisps of Scottish folk-song, is attractive, and there is an undercurrent of disquiet that somehow holds the movement together.
The Fifth Symphony is in some ways an over-statement of the qualities of the Third. Close motivic working is here taken to extremes: the whole of the first movement is built from a single abrupt figure. Built with admirable resource and fertile variety (here an acknowledgement of Beethovenian influence, there a nod towards Copland's dance music) and with an enjoyable brash exuberance, but ingenious permutation does duty for development, and there is a sense of the process just stopping when Harris gets tired of it. The slow movement has a dark, brooding, almost Baxian quality and the impassioned string music at its centre is eloquent, but there is always a risk of Harris's eloquence becoming strenuously knotted and muscle-bound, and the risk isn't always avoided. His epic-tragic vein is at its best when most sombre, plain and chant-like, and that mood, fortunately, is the movement's destination: the final paragraph and coda are most impressive. The finale contains moments of another characteristic Harris texture, music that is fast and slow at the same time, but its fundamental joviality is unconvincing, and the conclusion is perfunctorily noisy. Still, there's enough real Harris here to make the search for the Third Symphony's successor seem worthwhile.
Even so, the best music in this generous coupling is the Violin Concerto, which doesn't sound at all like the Third Symphony (though it does have a similarly individual structure). A massive 20-minute set of variations on a long, slow, serious theme is split asunder by a central dance-movement, strongly redolent of folk fiddle-playing, that gets quicker as it proceeds. The bipartite variation movement is in effect a continuously developing rhapsody, increasingly florid in its solo writing but saved from garrulity by the firm purposefulness of the theme that underlies its profusion. The final section, in which much of the orchestra joins the soloist in his dancing flourishes, while the theme proceeds sonorously beneath, is a logical tying-up of the Concerto's apparently loose ends.
It was never played in Harris's lifetime but he would have been delighted with the ardour and brilliance of the soloist here (he gave the work its 35-years-delayed first performance in 1984). The Louisville Orchestra is heard at its best in this work, too, and the recording (dating from 1985) sounds well. That of the First Symphony is seven years older: the performance is enthusiastic if somewhat unkempt, but the sound is exhaustingly raw and wiry. The recording of the Fifth Symphony is undated, but its conductor retired in 1967; it is a decent performance, dully recorded and only adequately played. Treat the symphonies as worthwhile fill-ups to the Concerto would be my advice.'