Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra/Joel Eric Suben

This compact disc of the three symphonies of Anthony Louis Scarmolin (1890-1969) is the first commercially available recording of any of his more than 1,100 works. His output includes eight operas as well as numerous orchestral works, songs, sacred music, chamber music, works for solo piano, and pieces of a pedagogical nature. The musical language of the three symphonies is decidedly conservative. That of the First Symphony is evocative of Rachmaninoff and Richard Strauss, as well as the emigré Hollywood composers of the period such as Korngold and Steiner. This latter influence can be heard in the upward-surging second theme of the first movement.

Touches of well-travelled exoticism are heard in the Second Symphony-the modal second theme of its first movement is suggestive of Vaughan Williams, and the second and third movements have touches of Orientalism. The language of the Third Symphony is more influenced by the contemporary styles of Harris and Copland-reflective, with its parallel fourths and fifths, of the social-realist Americana of the Thirties and Forties. These works will be a felicitous discovery for devotees of symphonic music.