Symphonies 5 & 7
Howard Hanson is one of America's great mid-century composers. His music, like that of Roy  Harris, draws its character from the plains, from the pioneer blood that settled that part of the country. Here  we have two major symphonies, a piano concerto, and a tone-poem, "Mosaics". These works  are at the heart of American Romanticism; his melodies are distinct and tonal, his writing formal. He's not  as idiosyncratic as Roy Harris or as buoyant as Copland and his music never went into other areas of 20th- century experimentation. But his symphonies, particularly the Fifth, belong in every collection.--Paul  Cook