Sessions: Symphonies Nos. 6, 7 & 9

Album review

One might be forgiven for thinking that it's not Roger Sessions' music that is difficult, but its performers who make it so. Of all the recordings in the limited Sessions' discography, only Dimitri Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic ever got close to making Sessions remotely comprehensible. The rest range from the vapid Seiji Ozawa recordings to the void Akeo Watanabe recordings and none of them come close to making Sessions' music listenable, much less comprehensible.
That is until this 1995 recording by Dennis Russell Davies conducting the American Composers Orchestra of Sessions' Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth symphonies. For the first time since Mitropoulos and the N.Y.P.O., Sessions sounds listenable if not yet quite comprehensible at first listening. But then, no matter who's performing Sessions' music, it is formidably difficult and only repeated listenings can do anything to make it comprehensible. Fortunately, Davies and the A.C.O.'s performances can stand repeated listening. Sessions' angular lines are played in tune, his asymmetrical rhythms are cogent, and his irregular structures are coherent. Even more amazingly, Davies and the A.C.O. even make Sessions' music moving: the closing movement of the Symphony No. 7 is as deeply moving as Mitropoulos and, thankfully, Argo's digital sound is cleaner and clearer than Mitropoulos' air-check monaural sound. This is as great a Sessions disc as has ever been made.

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