Much of this CD is an orgy of romantic piano music. Admirers of Hanson’s Romantic Symphony (Arte Nova, 12/97) or his one-time smash-hit opera Merry Mount (Naxos, 4/99) will devour this collection, which includes unknown and unpublished music. A first impression is that the earliest works here, written around 1920, have the sort of ecstatic luxuriance that might be expected of a pupil of Respighi. But this influence came later since Hanson didn’t start his three-year residence in Rome until 1921. His background was Swedish and there’s a Nordic, Sibelian intensity about his whole approach, although the fulsome piano style stems from Liszt.
The earliest piece is probably the Slumber Song, a pure salon morsel, and the latest is the suite For the First Time; this is known in Hanson’s still current 1962 orchestral recording (Mercury), but the restrained piano version (1970) works admirably in the Schumann-to-MacDowell tradition of an extended set of character pieces. The three Poemes erotiques (the fourth has disappeared) are what Hanson called his ‘first studied attempt at psychological writing’. They are powerful in a surging melodic style where in several pieces the climaxes stem from an almost Tchaikovskian cathartic need to unburden tensions.
The striking three-movement Sonata (1918) has had to be completed from the composer’s shorthand by Thomas Labe since it was never published, although Hanson performed it in 1919. The vivid improvisatory keyboard writing, at times extravagantly rhetorical, causes Labe to hit the piano rather hard in the last two movements. One can understand his enthusiasm, but there are times when a little more cantabile might have helped. However, nothing must detract from the real service that this CD does in bringing Hanson’s piano music to public attention for the first time.'