I picked up one of those cheap Naxos CDs - Mr. Howard Hanson - what a composer he was. It's shocking Hollywood never tapped him because his music SOUNDS like great filmmusic - better than most. Ridley Scott, of course, angered fans of Mr. Jerry Goldsmith by replacing some Goldsmith with Hanson for the end credits of Alien. The last ten minutes or so of ET was clearly temp-tracked with the final movement of Mr. Hanson's Romantic Symphony - same rhythms, same harmonic structure, same emotion.
The Naxos disc is marvelous and can be had for about six bucks. It has his Organ Concerto - I wonder if MusicGuy has heard this wonderful, brilliant piece? It also has the Nymphs and Satyr Ballet Suite and a bunch of other pieces for solo instrument and string orchestra. I'd say it's one of the best releases of the year.
We issued the Organ Concerto and the Nymphs and Satyr Ballet Suite on Bay Cities (our classical line was predominantly American composers), but these performances are really good, and the Bay Cities discs are long out of print. It was our devotion to American classical music that got us our first devoted fans - there was basically only one other label doing it, and they were REALLY tiny. After we made our splash, I must say other major labels really jumped on the bandwagon. It was most amusing to watch. Sort of like what happened when we started up at Varese - Broadway music (and especially B'way vocalists) were dead on CD. Maybe ten releases a year from ALL the labels put together. I came out swinging, and in the first year and a half did twenty-seven CDs. Within six months, all the majors were back into it, gobbling up stuff we were getting, and also getting their feet wet with vocalists. It was amusing to watch.
