Harrison-Ung-McPhee was one of the finest recordings of contemporary music to appear on a major label in the 1990s, a 1994 effort by the American Composers Orchestra under Dennis Russell Davies that appeared on UK Decca's imprint Argo. It features the Suite for Symphonic Strings of Lou Harrison, originally commissioned for the Louisville Orchestra in 1961 and first recorded under Robert Whitney for the orchestra's own label. The Suite for Symphonic Strings is one of Harrison's characteristic suites, cobbled together out of ...
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Harrison-Ung-McPhee was one of the finest recordings of contemporary music to appear on a major label in the 1990s, a 1994 effort by the American Composers Orchestra under Dennis Russell Davies that appeared on UK Decca's imprint Argo. It features the Suite for Symphonic Strings of Lou Harrison, originally commissioned for the Louisville Orchestra in 1961 and first recorded under Robert Whitney for the orchestra's own label. The Suite for Symphonic Strings is one of Harrison's characteristic suites, cobbled together out of various movements ranging from throughout his career. However, this particular suite is one of his most successful efforts in that vein, and Harrison utilizes tasteful percussion to underscore imaginative tropes of old dance forms, ranging from French renaissance dances to the music evocative of Pacific Rim cultures, though he does not directly invoke them here. The other older work is Colin McPhee's imaginative concerto Tabuh-Tabuhan (1936) based on Balinese music; at the time...
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