Lou Harrison
Piano Concerto

Joanna MacGregor

Joanna MacGregor, piano
Sian Edwards, conductor
Sydney Symphony Orchestra

For fifty years, Lou Harrison has been one of the most innovative and imaginative of American composers. Before the concept of 'multiculturalism' permeated popular culture, Harrison was successfully integrating Western and Asian musical forms, writing lyrical works influenced by Beijing Opera, Gregorian chant and Indonesian Gamelan Music.

Born in Portland, Oregon on 14 May 1917, Lou Harrison grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. At the same time as studying with Henry Cowell, Virgil Thomson and Arnold Schoenberg, his early partnership with John Cage produced a wealth of inventive percussion music, fashioning instruments out of old brake drums and oxygen tanks. With William Colvig he has constructed two large Gamelans, and over the decades he has maintained an interest in dance, theatre and the craft of instrument building. His oeuvre includes solo, chamber, choral and orchestral works - although Lou also likes to point out that apart from being a composer, he has been a painter, a calligrapher, an animal nurse, a dance accompanist, a forestry firefighter and a poet.

Meeting Lou Harrison for the first time in the summer of 1996, I was struck by his warmth and good humour, as well as his generosity and tolerance, which is not surprising, I suppose, given his life-long commitment to Buddhism. From the moment I first worked on this piece with Lou at Dartington Summer School I became entranced. It's a work which somehow obeys all the rules of a piano concerto while simultaneously defying expectation; a piece which manages to encompass a Western art form within a much bigger canvas.

The piano concerto is an epic piece, one which effortlessly explores three different traditions; the Western classical tradition, with a nod to Brahms in the first movement; the pioneering prairie style of American 20th Century music; and an older dance tradition, found more commonly in medieval and Asian music.
[notes by Joanna MacGregor]

Recorded 19-20 January 1999 at the Eugene Goossens Hall, Ultimo Centre, Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

QuickTime sample 309k

Excerpt from Movement IV

Exclusive interview: Lou Harrison for SoundCircus