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.
Raymond Hanson is featured on the following titles
Raymond Hanson: Violin Music
Raymond Hanson (1913–1976) is one of Australia’s most neglected composers. His music is rarely heard in concert, and even more rarely on disc. Access to the scores is part of the problem: most of the works recorded here survive only in manuscript in the Sydney Conservatorium library.