Most prolific living writer of symphonies is Russia's Nicolai Yokovlevich Miaskovsky, who at 61 has already written 23 and is still going strong. Finland's Jean Sibelius and another Russian, Dmitri Shostakovich, may be longer on quality, but they have in their long lives written only seven symphonies apiece. In the U.S., rangy, Oklahoma-born, 45-year-old Roy Harris leads the field. Last week his Fifth Symphony (the first Fifth by any U.S. native, living or dead) was premiered by Boston's Sergei Koussevitsky and broadcast the following night over the Blue Network.
Boston critics thought up...
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