Raymond Hanson
Raymond Hanson's scores favour evolving melodic lines and purposeful piano textures. The violin works and piano preludes show a tonal language spiced with chromatic bite, jazz rhythm and a clear resistance to serial fashion.
His 1939 Violin Sonata treats the piano as an equal, sometimes overpowering partner. Dense chords, roulades and false endings give it stance even when the form sprawls. Three Fancies and Seascape keep that sinewy keyboard writing while the violin thins, darkens or turns playful. The six piano Preludes written in the Burragorang valley answer landscape with rugged grandeur beside softness. An Etching of 1969 pushes further into atonal colour. Hanson absorbed Hindemith's harmonic tension, traces of Ravel and Delius, and a jazz sense of rhythmic fluidity, yet stayed outside fashion. He wanted contact between creator and listener, not incomprehensibility for its own sake.
Compositions by Raymond Hanson appear on
Siva
Michael Kieran Harvey plays Australian masterworks for piano of the last fifty years. The composers represented on this great recording include Raymond Hanson, Gordon Kerry, Brendan Colbert, Helen Gifford and Neil Kelly.
Jinker Ride
Here is a musical collection in celebration of the glorious instrument, the piano, expressly written for and the fully exploiting the resources of the modern pianoforte.