There was no more enthusiastic champion of American music than Howard Hanson, who enjoyed a long career as a composer, conductor, and educator. Best known today for his Second Symphony ‘Romantic’, Hanson maintained a steady stream of compositions in an unashamedly romantic idiom. Cast in the one-movement episodic form that Hanson frequently employed, the exciting Concerto for Organ, Harp, and Strings includes a characteristic dance ostinato. Nymphs and Satyr (1979), a ballet suite for chamber orchestra, was Hanson’s last completed major composition. The lyrical and flowing Serenade for Flute, Harp, and Strings, Op. 35 was composed as a courtship gift to Margaret Elizabeth Nelson, whom Hanson married in 1946.