This is a lovely collection
of music from Copland’s first 25 years as a professional composer
and the style varies from the naughty boy jazz–inflected Music
for the Theater, through the urban blues of Quiet City
and some homespun Americana for film, to the more sophisticated
use of jazz in the Clarinet Concerto.
In 1925 the Music for the
Theater must have seemed to be outrageously modern – the
bluesy/jazzy feel to much of the work and the jagged rhythms
of the fast music, not to mention the spare orchestration
– for Copland had learned a lot from both pre– and post–war
Stravinsky. But there are some exquisite moments of reflection
in this work – the third movement Interlude is an oasis
of calm between the ribald Dance and Burlesque.
The orchestra employed here is quite small and the performance
is never over stated, as it is in Bernstein’s recording (good
thought that is) with the New York Philharmonic and a very
up front 1960s CBS recording (Sony Classical SMK 60177, coupled
with Copland’s Piano Concerto, Connotations
and El Salón México), the jokes being pointed nicely and
the “daring” quality of the music is allowed to startle as
it should – nothing is out of place. This is very fine indeed.
For me, Quiet City
is one of the unsung masterpieces of music – and not just
music from America. Starting life as incidental music to a
play which never achieved a production, Copland fashioned
this real gem of a piece, full of urban loneliness, empty
city streets, and a special yearning which I don’t often find
in Copland’s music. Davies treats the piece as a nostalgic
nocturne, not making the climax into the big moment, but allowing
it to grow from the logical progression of the music. There
might be insufficient passion for some here but this is an
heartfelt and deeply moving performance.
Music for Movies
is a five movement suite made up from music written for three
films – The City (1939), Our Town (1940) (directed
by Sam Wood, the man who gave us the Marx Brothers’ A Night
at the Opera) and Of Mice and Men (1940) (for which
Copland was nominated for two Oscars) – and is an attractive
work, which, as with Music for the Theater, benefits
from the use of a smaller orchestra than might normally be
engaged. There’s a lot of the wide open space music for which
Copland is justly famous, and the second movement, Barley
Wagons, is as fine a piece of Americana as Copland ever
produced. I must mention that you won’t want to be without
Copland’s own recording which, as you’d expect from a composer
led performance, has a special feel to it (Sony Classical
S3K46559, coupled with other Copland works, including the
Clarinet Concerto with Benny Goodman, conducted by
the composer).
The Clarinet Concerto
was written for Benny Goodman, and is in two parts, a gentle
and very languorous quasi waltz and a riotous jazz section.
It’s a lovely piece and when played straight, that is without
trying to jazz up the jazz section by adding extra turns and
pulling the rhythm about, and fortunately Blount understands
this and gives a very good performance, reveling in the gentle
lyricism of the first half and the wild rhythms of the second.
This is one of the best interpretations of the work I’ve heard
on disk and gives Benny Goodman and Copland a run for their
money. Davis’s contribution is excellent, restrained and sensual
at first and abandoned in the later stages, and he is helped
by a reduced orchestral string section.
I would not want to be without
the composer-led performances on Sony, as listed above, but
this is a nice compilation which complements the Sony disks
very well. The recording is a little backward so you need
to turn the volume up to get a real presence in the sound,
and then you can enjoy the fine music-making. Vivian Perlis’s
booklet notes are a joy too.
Bob
Briggs
William Blount (clarinet), Stephen Taylor (cor anglais), Chris Gekker
(trumpet), Orchestra of St Luke’s/Dennis Russell Davies 
