This CD – ironically recorded at the Russian State TV & Radio Company in Moscow – brings collectors and music lovers four major works from an American composer who was internationally known in the 1940s but whose music had dropped into obscurity. Headley, who lived until 1995, was not only a composer but also a concert pianist and conductor. Howard Hanson called his California Suite “a brilliant score.” At the age of ten he was introduced to Maurice Ravel, whose music has a strong effect on him. He studied at the Eastman School of Music, won a MacDowell Fellowship in Composition and was pianist and conductor of his own works thruout Europe.
Headley’s California Suite was commissioned by Standard Oil of California for the opening of the 1939 Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco. The three descriptive movements are titled Golden Gate, Yosemite, and Fiesta. Golden Gate depicts sights and sounds of San Francisco, including the foghorns, and Yosemite evokes the impressive vistas of that national park. The two short piano concertos are greatly contrasted and interesting works that should be part of today concert repertory. No. 1 strangely doesn’t communicate any audible elements of Argentine music or tango, but is a dramatic work with a virtuoso piano part and colorful orchestration. The orchestra often takes a rather dissonant turn while the piano part remains more diatonic and simple.
The second concerto shows a more personal style, with dedication to the suffering and triumphs of oppressed peoples. The brass section has a strong role here, as it does in much of Headley’s music. A strong theme in its center portion sounds almost Russian. The “for Radio” in the title of the short First Symphony dates it accurately to the 40s (and the 30s in Europe), when a number of composers were commissioned by radio stations or networks to write music to be premiered on the air. The chamber symphony involves spotlighting many of the solo instruments of the orchestra. Headley’s music deserves to be resurrected due not only to its accessibility but to its suggestions of more depth than found in several of the lesser American composers of this period.
– John Sunier
