This new release by Bridge is a wonderful collection of American orchestral songs, full of discoveries and surprises. Pride of place must go to the first recording of Roy Harris's Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun on a text by Walt Whitman. Harris's brilliant monodrama travels from rural America to the streets of Manhattan, all the while observing and commenting on the ravages of the Civil War. It is, in the words of one critic, “a great, lost 20th century American masterpiece, and among Harris's very finest scores.” The disc includes songs set to Chinese poems by both Griffes and Carpenter, and Virgil Thomson's passionate The Feast of Love. Also featured is another rarity- Horatio Parker's 1893 monodrama, Cahal Mor of the Wine-Red Hand in its premiere recording. All five works are sung by Grammy-nominated baritone, Patrick Mason accompanied by Denmark's Odense Symphony Orchestra