CD review time already?

William Schuman's Symphony No. 10, conducted by Gerard Schwarz, is part of a phase I went through a while back when I realized I didn't have all the Schuman works I wanted. In my haste to get all his symphonies, I marked my Amazon.com wish list with a couple of CDs I actually didn't really need. This is one of them. A girlfriend bought this before I realized it contained only the 7th and 10th symphonies--and I already had recordings of both. Hence, I mark this by the conductor to distinguish from the 10th symphony disk conducted by Leonard Slatkin. There are worse things than having two performances on separate recordings when it comes to Schuman symphonies.

The 7th symphony shows Mr. Schuman's characteristic style of dense, slow-moving, dark harmonies, but it's less monumental in feeling and the leavening of folk-melody elements actually give the work a light-footed feel that's not only unusual for William Schuman, but very pleasant. The 10th symphony, subtitled "American Muse" is a self-consciously "major work". Again, it's huge and filled with thick, tense harmonies, but the structure is clearer than the 7th, helping things move along, despite clocking in at over a half-hour. Oddly, despite the title, the folk melodies aren't as pronounced as the 7th, but the pleasures of this work come from broader themes embedded in Mr. Schuman's typically rich writing.

Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony once again show that their long relationship recording American composers is a boon to all of us interested in the topic. It's a shame that musicians like William Schuman, Howard Hanson, and Walter Piston (among others) don't get a better hearing, especially with exemplary recordings like these.

8 out of 10

CDs listened to today:

• Kenny Wheeler: Music For Large & Small Ensembles, disk 2
• György Ligeti: Nonsense Madrigals
• Bill Nelson: The Strangest Things
• Kevin Puts: Dark Vigil
• Claudio Monteverdi: Il Sesto Libro Dei Madrigali
• Possum Dixon: (eponymous)
• Konono No. 1: Congotronics