Albany Symphony Orchestra & David Alan Miller - The Great American Ninth (2006)

Should it be said that Roy Harris is as great a composer as he was once thought to be, that his Symphony No. 3 is the best work in the form by an American, that his great works are bright and joyous and luminously scored, that he more than Hanson or Diamond or even Copland, he deserves to be called the greatest of the great American symphonists?
Of course not: all anyone can really do is listen to the music. And, as this 1998 recording of Harris' Eighth and Ninth symphonies coupled with his Memories of a Child's Sunday by David Allen Miller and the Albany Symphony proves, if people listen to the music, Harris is indeed as great a composer as he was once thought to be. His Memories of a Child's Sunday are charming, but his symphonies are astounding and exalted. The Eighth is a single-movement, rapturous hymn to Saint Francis of Assai and the Ninth, his purely orchestral conflation of the "Declaration of Independence" and The Leaves of Grass, is a furiously patriotic hymn to America.
Of course the only way to listen to the Eighth and Ninth is to listen to this disc because Miller and the Albany's recording is the only one there is. And it is as stupendous as the music. Their Child's Sunday is delightful, but the symphonies are expertly argued and astonishingly well played. Albany's sound is as good as the best digital recordings being made in 1998, which is very good indeed. Listen to this disc and hear some of the greatest American music from the twentieth century in a performance and a recording fully worthy of the music. © TiVo