Koussevitzky 5: Mostly Twentieth Century

The last of the five two-CD albums in the Maestro Risoluto box set of recordings made by Serge Koussevitzky is somewhat of a mixed bag. Following up on the fourth album, most of the selections were composed in the twentieth century; but the first CD begins with Richard Strauss Opus 30 tone poem “Also sprach Zarathustra.” If that composition has any twentieth-century qualities, they are grounded in the use of that music in the soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that did not appear until over fifteen years after Koussevitzky’s death!

The album also includes the only selection that is not performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This was the first recording made of Jean Sibelius’ Opus 105 (seventh) symphony in C major. The recording was made in Boston’s Symphony Hall, but the ensemble was the visiting BBC Symphony Orchestra.

The second CD presents three significant recordings of orchestral music composed by Koussevitzky’s American contemporaries. The first of these is Roy Harris’ third symphony. Koussevitzky conducted the world premiere of this tightly-knit composition with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on February 24, 1939. However, the recording was not made until November 8 of the same year. While it has been a long time since I listened to a recording of this symphony, during the middle of the twentieth century it was regarded by many as the quintessential American symphony.

The second symphony is Howard Hanson’s Opus 63 (third) in A minor. Back when I was writing for Examiner.com, my contact at Naxos provided me with recordings of Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony performing all of Hanson’s symphonies. Schwarz was very good at presenting the “grand sound” of each of those symphonies. I suspect the Koussevitzky took the same approach, but this is music that holds up better under “higher fidelity” technology.

The final selection on the Koussevitzky CD is the suite that Aaron Copland extracted from the score he had composed for Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring.” In spite of the reputation of the Harris third, this is probably the one selection that will resonate with familiarity to just about all listeners. Much as I like the suite, I like the choreography more. That was one of the reasons that, during pandemic conditions, I went out of my way to watch the “original cast” film of “Appalachian Spring” on YouTube and to use that viewing experience to explain all the factors that make both Copland’s score and Graham’s choreography significant. Koussevitzky’s interests, on the other hand, never seemed to venture beyond Copland’s suite. Nevertheless, his performance of that suite in 1945 was a premiere; and the recording on this album seems to have been made around the same time as that performance.