MUSIC FOR STAGE AND SCREEN

This release features some great Copland material, but the gems on this recording are some obscure works by John Williams. The "Suite from 'Born on the Fourth of July'" is superbly written and beautifully played. The solo trumpet and English horn playing is stunning. This "Suite" is a fabulous collection. However, it is "The Reivers" that is the crowning achievement on this CD. The piece is a musical narrative based on selections of William Faulkner's novel of the same name. An Americana setting in the deep south during the turn of the century sets the stage for a heart-warming "coming of age" story. What gives this recording more credence is the narration, performed by Burgess Meredith. The music is descriptive, powerful and emotional. Five very unique stars!!!! Shop here

COPLAND : LINCOLN PORTRAIT

Everybody wants to do "A Lincoln Portrait" and sometimes the choice of Speaker is ludicrous (not the rap star). The Worst - Adlai Stevenson - The Best - Heston. Okay put your political prejudices aside and concentrate on performance. Heston's tonality and modulation are simply Lincolnesque. He never goes over the top - and "of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth" are spoken from the gut without histrionics but with enough emotion to put a tear in your eye. The work of Abravanel and the Utah Symphony Orchestra is simply marvelous. Although this was recorded on analog tape, the dynamics are almost digital but warmer. Also the music from "Our Town" which somebody ought to remake is quietly evocative and lovely; "Outdoor Overture" which I played in high school is just a lot of fun. "Quiet City" is a better piece than most people realize - if the trumpet isn't just right it falls flat - suffice it to say this performance doesn't. The Morton Gould piece is worth a mention, but I'm conflicted by Morton, whom I've always considered a better orchestrator than composer of original music. This recording is a keeper. --D. Barrett "Starcastle"

ARON COPLAND: POPULIST AND CONDUCTOR

Aaron Copland made numerous recordings of his own music, including an extensive series for CBS during the 1960s and '70s, mostly with London orchestras. He was not an especially proficient conductor--consequently, the performances he conducted often lacked pace and rhythmic punch. His last recordings of his most popular scores have been reissued by Sony on an exceptionally well-remastered 3-CD set. These accounts do a good job of conveying the overall shape of the pieces, and they deliver telling characterizations of many episodes. Details emerge that are lost in some other accounts, and there is an appealing gentleness and sweetness to the approach. But the readings do not have as much grip as those of Bernstein and Slatkin, among others, and in spite of the authority they automatically possess, they are not necessarily preferable. --Ted Libbey

QUIET CITY

Aron Copland (1900-1990)

On april 16, 1939, Irwin Shaw’s Quiet City opened in New York City at the Group Theatre. Thanks to Harold Clurman, the director, it had incidental music by his friend Aron Copland. The play, according to Copland, was “a realistic fantasy concerning the night thoughts of many different kinds of people in a great city.” It centered on a lonely Jewish boy, David Mellnikoff, who expressed his sorrow and isolation on his jazz trumpet and whose playing, says the composer, “helped to arouse the conscience of his fellow players and of the audience.” Using only clarinet, saxophone, trumpet and piano, the music aimed at expressing “the emotions of the characters, the nostalgia and inner distress of a society profoundly aware of its own insecurity.”

In 1940, at the urging of friends. Copland composed the concert piece Quiet City, for trumpet, English horn and string orchestra. This score, he told the annotator recently, is based entirely on the thematic materials of the music to the play” :

There wasn’t much continuous music with the play, just short sections, so that the orchestral piece bears little resemblance to the incidental music, which I never published.

The idea of contrasting trumpet with English horn was a travaille, a “find,” giving, I think, a certain freshness and variety of instrumental color. A practical reason for the English horn was to let the trumpeter have a breathing space, so that he wasn’t made to play continuously.

There are not many quiet trumpet-solo works in the repertory, and I doubt whether there are many English horn solo-pieces of any sort. Quiet City is challenging music for the soloists, with a comparatively straight forward orchestral accompaniment.

Copland’s atmospheric Quiet City is brooding and elegiac, with declamatory trumpet and English horn prominent against the commentary of the strings. (British critic Wilfrid Mellers has described the trumpet solo as “both Negroid in its blue notes and Jewish in its incantatory repetitions.”) In the final climax, the strings play an integral part. Copland views Quiet City as “a rather unusual showpiece for the two sololists—unusual because one seldom hears trumpet and English horn in roles as contrasting instruments in a soloistic yet quiet setting.”

Quiet City was given its premiere in New York, on January 28, 1941, by the Saisenberg Little Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Sardenberg.

Phillip Ramey