There have been a few-but very few-references on here to the American composer, Randall Thompson.
Thompson was a distinguished academic who served as Director of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia from 1939-41 and was Professor at Princeton, 1946-48 and at Harvard from 1948 until 1965. His pupils at Harvard included Leonard Bernstein.
Thompson wrote a substantial body of choral music, with which I am not familiar. Nor do I know whether much or indeed any of it is still sung in the US (
Karl....?).
He wrote almost entirely to commission, claiming that this provided both the incentive and the discipline best suited to his composition.
I do know Thompson's three symphonies however. The First was the final product of a Guggenheim Fellowship and was premiered in 1930 conducted by Howard Hanson. It is an interesting work with clean, lean textures influenced by the composer's three years in Italy as a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Thompson had frequently visited Malipiero during that period and there are certainly some resonance of Malipiero in the symphony. It is on a Koch cd coupled with some Morton Gould with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra under James Sedares.
The Second and Third Symphonies were recorded on another Koch cd with the New Zealand SO under the late Andrew Schenck. The Second was also recorded by Neeme Jarvi with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for Chandos coupled with some music by George Chadwick.
The Second is probably Thompson's most popular symphony(or at least, best known!). Composed in Switzerland it too was first conducted by Howard Hanson in 1932. It is a delightful, tuneful, almost Schubertian piece in which Thompson used the symphony orchestra with a trademark discretion and good taste. I actually prefer the Third Symphony of 1949. It rather sank without much trace after its premiere and there is no doubt that, by the standards of the time, it is an old-fashioned composition but it does fizz along with an infectious energy which is never less than cheerful and uplifting.
I am certainly not going to claim that Thompson was a great American symphonist. He pales in comparison with people like William Schuman or Walter Piston and he is definitely no Roger Sessions
But if you like the symphonies of Roy Harris, Howard Hanson or Paul Creston Thompson might be worth a go.
