The first native-born American to compose for large symphonic forces, Fry vociferously insisted that Americans support the music created on their own soil. But even critics who rejected his outspoken theories, lauded his gifts as a composer. Fry’s Santa Claus Symphony is a fantastical composition with tightly constructed drama full of heady drawing-room romanticism, with perhaps the first use of the newly invented saxophone in a symphony. There is still much of Fry’s music that has never been heard, and this recording offers the first public hearing ever of the Niagara Symphony and the Overture to Macbeth.
