Pioneer multi-culturalist composer
Lou Harrison left behind an output that is truly awesome, both in its size and variety, but it has remained only inconsistently available on records and CDs. This is a pity, as the vast majority of his music is appealing, memorable, and relatively easy to grasp, not to mention its great sense of relevance to future developments in music, which, in his prime,
Harrison had no idea to what extent his work would be applicable.
Harrison's work was in the main driven by his great interest in the indigenous music of the Pacific Rim, his love of the English Renaissance, and his pursuit of alternate forms of tuning and mildly microtonal scales. New World's Lou Harrison: Chamber and Gamelan Works is a revised version of an entry in CRI's American Masters series that was in itself a compilation of recordings issued on LP between 1965 and 1979.
The earliest of these recordings features the great Paul Price Percussion Ensemble in
Harrison's 1942 Suite for Percussion, a seminal percussion group that heretofore has had little presence on CD in a piece that "rocks." Similarly rhythmic is the "Estampie" movement of
Harrison's String Quartet Set, performed by the
Kronos Quartet in what might have been its earliest outing on record. The Concerto in Slendro presents violinist
Daniel Kobialka in a concerto accompanied by two tack pianos, celesta, and percussion, and the balance of the disc is taken up with
Harrison's own recordings with one of his Gamelan orchestras, the Gamelan Sekar Kembar. These pieces, which utilize a band of homemade gongs playing in a non-Western tuning, employ a violinist, French horn player, and
Harrison's own suling as a solo element against the dreamy, hypnotic background provided by the gongs -- the very embodiment in music of clear, sunny skies and salty sea air.
Leta Miller, foremost scholar in all things
Harrison, provides excellent detail on the music in her enclosed booklet note, and the sound boasts a considerable improvement in comparison to the CRI CD. Listeners strongly concerned with classical music and its relation to the central European tradition tend not to like
Harrison much owing to his eccentricity and perceived lack of "seriousness"; by his own admission was not a participant in the hierarchy of Western music. Those who like world music, however, or the music of
Harrison's friend
Harry Partch or even primarily rock, will likely find much to enjoy in New World's Lou Harrison: Chamber and Gamelan Works.