Organ Symphony / Dance Symphony / Short Symphony
The Copland known to most people is the composer of scores such asEl Salón México,Rodeo,Appalachian Spring, and the Third Symphony--in short, of the popular, approachably folksy works of the years 1936 to 1946. But what about the music Copland wrote before these defining pieces? Some would say it's even more important, having served to open the door, as Virgil Thomson rightly observed, to "the voice of America in our generation." The four works on this disc show that Copland was Copland--a powerful, provocative, original, and energetic musical personality--before he was "Copland." The daring Organ Symphony of 1924, the same year as Gershwin'sRhapsody in Blue, sounds at least 20 years ahead of its time. The Dance Symphony, from 1929 (but based on material from Copland's 1922 ballet,Grohg), is permeated by the aroma of French modernism and full of the spiky grotesqueries of Stravinsky and Bartók, yet it's got a jazzy swagger that's distinctively ... Copland. Ditto for the Short Symphony of 1933, rhythmically one of the most boisterous pieces Copland ever wrote. Even the one work that appears to be "later" Copland--the Orchestral Variations of 1957--is actually from the same youthful vintage as the symphonies. It's Copland's orchestration of his epoch-making 1930 Piano Variations, among the most powerful utterances in the history of American music. Seventy years later, the force of the musical ideas in this piece still takes listeners' breath away, and reminds us it was no accident that Copland has come to be regarded as America's greatest composer. Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra play the spots off all the music on this CD, and the sound is superlative.--Ted Libbey