Roy Harris: Symphony for Band “West Point” (1952) (UCLA Wind Ensemble, James Westbrook), Chorale for String Orchestra (1932), Prelude and Fugue for String Orchestra (1935) (International String Congress Orchestra, Roy Harris). Robert Russell Bennett: Violin Concerto (Louis Kaufman, London Symphony Orchestra, Bernard Hermann). Bay Cities BCD-1008 (1989) barcode 094659100822
Symphony for Band recorded 1979
Chorale, Prelude & Fugue recorded circa 1960
Violin Concerto recorded 19 May 1956 at the Royal Festival Hall, London
The Symphony for Band the main prize of this CD
Originally posted on Amazon.com, 12 June 2008
OK, so Harris sounds always the same? Well, doesn’t Vivaldi, Haendel, Rossini (or, for that matter, Varèse)? And when you love Vivaldi, Haendel, Rossini – or Varèse…, you can never have enough of the same dish.
So, yes, nothing sounds more like a Symphony of Roy Harris then the next Symphony of Roy Harris, and I am very happy to get more of it. Strip a Harris Symphony of its strings, and you’ll get something like the Symphony for Band. Subtitled “West Point”, it was composed in 1952 to celebrate the institution’s 150th Anniversary. It is not numbered among Harris Symphonies – it should, just like Persichetti’s 6th, also written for band, and Morton Gould’s 4th, written for the same occasion as Harris’ and also subtitled “West Point”. 18:30 in length, it is couched in symphonic form, although its three movements follow without break (and the Symphony gets only one entry cue on the CD). It has the same epic quality as Harris other symphonies, the agitated woodwind figuration over the irresistible undercurrent of slow moving bass chorales. But it also has a playful quality that is not always encountered in the Symphonies of Harris. This recording by the UCLA Wind Ensemble under James Westbrook was made in 1979 and first came out on a Varèse Sarabande LP in 1980, VC81100 
(paired with the Cimaron-overture for brass by the same forces and Concerto for piano and strings played by Johanna Harris and conducted by the composer, both reissued on a companion Bay Cities CD, BCD-1002, link will open new tab to my review). There was also an earlier recording of the West Point Symphony, again with Harris conducting the West Point Band, on a semi-private label and limited edition documenting the 1952 Pittsburgh Festival of Contemporary Music (see on the website of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh for more, and a partial listing of the 20-LP set on Discogs.com). But can this really be only the second recording, and so far still the only one available on CD, of this fine composition? Now wake up, band conductors, you sleeping beauties! This is as good as anything ever written for the medium.
Back to Westbrook and his UCLA forces, besides the above-mentioned Cimarron-Overture, they also recorded three pieces for organ and brass: Toccata, Chorale and Fantasy, released in 1979 on Varèse Sarande VC 81085 
(with the Concerto for Amplified Piano, Brass, String Basses and Timpani). These three pieces are also on the companion Bay Cities disc mentioned above. Too bad the opportunity was lost for a coherent, all Harris/Band/Westbrook program, which would have had uniformly good and spacious stereo sound. The label Citadel has assembled a coherent program of the kind, Citadel 88114 barcode 795818811428, with all the Harris-conduced pieces from these Varèse Sarabande LPs and Bay Cities CDs (the two Piano Concertos, Chorale and Prelude & Fugue for Strings). Link will open new tab to listing on Discogs.com.
Indeed, while the Symphony comes in excellent stereo, the two other Harris compositions are mono recordings, and the difference is jarring. Suddenly you jump back, from full-space stereo to distant and uni-dimensional mono. But I guess there is a sentimental value to having these pieces conducted by the composer himself, and the ear rapidly adjusts. Again, take the slow movement of a Harris Symphony, strip it of its winds and percussion, and you’ll get something like the Chorale and the Prelude and Fugue, brooding, appeased, lyrical.
The sound of Robert Russell Bennett’s Violin Concerto is even worse. It is not clear what source Bay Cities used, but it sounds terribly frayed, especially at the beginning (or maybe I ajusted again after a while), like an aircheck taped in poor receiving conditions – in fact it is indeed a live broadcast recording, made on May 19, 1956, which got its first publication on a Citadel LP released in 1978, with other piano and violin compositions of Bennett, including his Jazzy and unsubstantial Hexapoda, also reissued by Bay Cities on BCD 1019 (with Kaufman playing Walter Piston’s violin Concerto and Copland’s Violin Sonata; link to my review on Amazon.com pending repost here). The booklet notes are very wanting on this product info, mentioning only that the Concerto “originally appeared on Citadel CT-6005”. The rest I retrieved on the internet and by rummaging in old Schwann catalogs and back issues of Fanfare. On the internet (a useful Bernard Herrmann discography) I also found the following note, which comes from a Musical Heritage Society LP reissuing the Citadel LP: “The concerto was recorded in London the day after a Royal Festival Hall performance. The tape was used for a BBC broadcast, and possibly broadcast elsewhere, but did not, as planned, appear as a recording. Just why is not entirely clear. The project was set aside and mostly forgotten, until Bernard Herrmann, shortly before his death, asked Louis Kaufman if he knew of any copies of the tape. Kaufman remembered he had one and with Herrmann’s encouragement the project came alive again.”
The music is entertaining in its own way, and not memorable. It sounds to me like a mixture of Broadway and Khachaturian (the latter especially in the finale), with a few whiffs of Stravinsky (some of the violin figurations recall the finale of Stravinsky’s violin concerto) and Bloch (the chromaticisms of the violin’s first entry). Now that I’ve heard it, I can forget it and be happy to go back to Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto.
Bay Cities was a short-lived label (1989-1993) devoted mainly to soundtracks from films and reissues of recordings of symphonic works by 20th Century American Romantics (Robert Ward, David Diamond, Randall Thompson, Howard Hanson, Norman Dello Joio…) from the 1960s and earlier. These two Harris discs are among their most valuable releases (I also particularly cherish their Antheil/Morton Gould pairing on BCD-1016 barcode 094659101621, see my review on Amazon.com pending repost). A lot of the Bay Cities material was subsequently picked up by Citadel.