Geoffrey Burleson - Harris: Complete Piano Music (2010)

Tracklist

01. Piano Sonata, Op. 1: I. Prelude: Maestoso, con bravura
02. Piano Sonata, Op. 1: II. Andante ostinato: Misterioso
03. Piano Sonata, Op. 1: III. Scherzo: Vivace
04. Piano Sonata, Op. 1: IV. Coda: Maestoso, con bravura
05. Little Suite: I. Bells
06. Little Suite: II. Sad News
07. Little Suite: III. Children at Play
08. Little Suite: IV. Slumber
09. American Ballads I: I. Streets of Laredo
10. American Ballads I: II. Wayfaring Stranger
11. American Ballads I: III. The Bird
12. American Ballads I: IV. Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair
13. American Ballads I: V. Cod Liver lle
14. Suite in 3 Movements: I. Occupation
15. Suite in 3 Movements: II. Contemplation
16. Suite in 3 Movements: III. Recreation
17. Toccata for Piano
18. American Ballads II: I. Li'l Boy Named David
19. American Ballads II: II. When Johnny Comes Marching Home
20. True Love Don't Weep
21. Untitled Piano Piece (1926)
22. Piano Sonata: III. Scherzo (original version)
23. A Happy Piece for Shirley
24. Orchestrations

Many of Roy Harris’s piano pieces were inspired by his wife, the pianist Johana Harris, and demonstrate his wide-ranging musical influences, from Medieval chant and Baroque counterpoint to 20th-century French composers (he studied with Nadia Boulanger) and American and Irish folk music. His love of polytonal sonorities, spacious virtuosity, rhapsodic improvisational passages and intimate moods—a heady brew of diverse ingredients!—gives his piano music a fascinating quality, as if one were experiencing spontaneously evolving soundscapes teeming with vitality. Harris’s Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4 (8.559227), 5 & 6 (8.559609) and 7 & 9 (8.559050) are also available.

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