1 Billy The Kid (Complete Ballet) 1938 (32:26)

Rodeo (Complete Ballet) 1942 (22:52)
2 Buckaroo Holiday (7:07)
3 Corral Nocturne (3:34)
4 Piano Interlude & Saturday Night Waltz (7:57)
5 Hoe-Down (4:14)

Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra
Leonard Slatkin – conductor

Leonard Slatkin, who has done such outstanding service for American music, upholds the Copland tradition with potent, sympathetically argued accounts of the big ballets. The performances by the Saint Louis Symphony could hardly be bettered, and the recordings stand out for their solid sound as well. Slatkin does both Billy the Kid and Rodeo in full, restoring some delightful music in both scores that is missed when only the suites are presented. In Rodeo, for example, it comes as a delicious surprise to hear the Saloon-piano interlude before the "Saturday Night Waltz"--and Slatkin insists on an out-of-tune upright--just the right touch. These are idiomatic, persuasive accounts, thrilling in their buildups and potent in their climaxes. Even Appalachian Spring is done in full, though in its version for full orchestra. The treatment here is gentle, and while Slatkin generates less voltage than Bernstein, his reading has nobility and an engaging warmth. The recordings were made at a rather low level, but have a wonderful ambience and extraordinary dynamic range. Unfortunately, the individual scenes of both Billy the Kid and Appalachian Spring are not separately banded. ---Ted Libbey, amazon.com

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01. Fanfare for the Common Man
02. El Salon Mexico
03. Billy the Kid Concert Suite
04. Hoe Down from Rodeo
05. Appalachian Spring

New York Philharmonic Orchestra
James Levine (1)

New York Philharmonic Orchestra
Leonard Bernstein – conductor (2)

Cincinnati Pops Orchestra
Erich Kunzel (3)

London Symphony Orchestra
William Warfield – conductor (4)

Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra
Leonard Bernstein – conductor (5)

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Grohg
1. I. Introduction & Cortège - Entrance of Grohg	7:53
2. II. Dance of the Adolescent		6:19
3. III. Dance of the Opium-Eater (Visions of Jazz)		3:40
4. IV. Dance of the Street-Walker		4:31
5. V. Imagines the Dead Are Mocking Him	5:00
6. VI. Illumination and Disappearance of Grohg		2:13

Billy the Kid
7. I. Introduction. The Open Prairie	3:16
8. II. Street in a Frontier Town	3:17
9. III. Mexican Dance & Finale		7:07
10. IV. Prairie night (Card game at night) - Billy cheats Garrett at cards - They quarrel [3:39]
11. V. Gun battle - Billy is captured by Garrett, turned sheriff [2:34]
12. VIa. Celebration [3:00]
13. VIb. Billy in prison - Murder of the prison guard and escape [1:40]
14. VIc. Billy in the desert: Waltz [3:46]
15. VIIa. Billy's death [1:09]
16. VIIb. Billy's funeral: Mourning Mexicans [1:24]
17. VIII. The open prairie again [2:21] 

Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Leonard Slatkin - conductor

Aaron Copland did as much as anyone in establishing American concert music on the world stage, and his ballet scores proved to be among his most important and influential works. Grohg is the most ambitious example of his Parisian years, a precociously brilliant one-act ballet scored for full orchestra, inspired by the silent expressionist film Nosferatu. The first example of Copland’s new ‘Americanized’ music of the 1930s was Billy the Kid, based on the life of the 19th century outlaw and heard here in its full version. This was the first fully fledged American ballet in style and content: brassy, syncopated, filmic and richly folk-flavoured. ---prestomusic.com

Since becoming conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin has issued a variety of recordings. He has been able to call the shots as to repertory, and the results have generally been worthwhile. With this Copland release he and the orchestra have outdone themselves. Copland has always been one of Slatkin's specialties; he gets the peculiarly American mix of broadness and subtlety in the composer's music, and his readings of the big ballets are as fine as any on the market. Here you get the complete Billy the Kid, less often heard than the familiar Suite, and containing the solitary "Billy in the Desert" to match the card game nocturne, both hypnotically done. The real news here, however, is Grohg, written in 1925 at the suggestion of Copland's teacher, Nadia Boulanger, performed once in 1932, and then abandoned until the early 1990s. Performances are rare, but Slatkin's reading is good enough to change that. Having been given the task of writing a ballet and having recently seen the film Nosferatu, Copland asked the director Harold Clurman for a scenario, received a surreal tale in which the titular sorcerer animates a variety of personalities, and went to town with a score that reflects various fashions of the 1920s. There is a bit of jazz (paired, significantly, with the sorcerer's revived opium addict), some highly dissonant passages, perhaps even a bit of twisted-up Grieg. And yet, all of it somehow sounds like Copland, and there are foreshadowings aplenty of his mature style. Copland himself thought enough of the music to reuse some of it in his Symphony No. 2 ("Short Symphony"), and you couldn't ask for a better combination than Slatkin and the Detroiters in bringing out his personality in the music. Highly recommended. ---James Mannheim, AllMusic Review

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Old American Songs, Set I (1950)
1. The Boatmen's Dance 3:03
2. The Dodger 2:05
3. Long Time Ago 3:10
4. Simple Gifts 1:21
5. I Bought Me A Cat 2:12

Old American Songs, Set II (1952)
6. The Little Horses 3:11
7. Zion's Walls 1:44
8. The Golden Willow Tree 3:20
9. At The River 2:43
10. Ching-A-Ring Chaw 1:33

11. Canticle Of Freedom (1955) 13:46

Four Motets (1921)
12. Help Us, O Lord 2:50
13. Thou, O Jehovah, Abideth Forever 2:29
14. Have Mercy On Us, O My Lord 4:11
15. Sing Ye Praises To Our King 1:41

 Mormon Tabernacle Choir  
 Utah Symphony Orchestra 
 Michael Tilson Thomas  - conductor
 
Recorded in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Utah in 1986.

Copland born in Brooklyn, New York. Of Russian Jewish descent, he spent his childhood living above his parents' Brooklyn shop. Although his parents never encouraged or directly exposed him to music, at age fifteen he had already taken an interest in the subject and aspired to be a composer. His music education included time with Leopold Wolfsohn and Rubin Goldmark, also one of George Gershwin's teachers, and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris from 1921.

Upon his return from his studies in Paris, he decided that he wanted to write works that were 'American in character' and thus he chose jazz as the American idiom. His first significant work was the necromantic ballet Grohg which contributed thematic material to his later Dance Symphony. Other major works of his first (austere) period include the Short Symphony (1933), Music for Theater (1925) and Piano Variations (1939). This jazz inspired period was brief, however as his style evolved toward the goal of writing more accessible works.

Many composers rejected the notion of writing music for the elite during the depression, thus the common American folklore served as the basis for his work along with revival hymns, cowboy and folk songs. Copland's second (vernacular) period began around 1936 with Billy the Kid and El Salon Mexico. Perhaps Copland's most famous work, Fanfare for the Common Man, scored for brass and percussion was written in 1942 at the request of the conductor Eugene Goossens. The fanfare was also used as the main theme of the fourth movement of Copland's Third Symphony. The same year Copland wrote Lincoln Portrait which became popular with a larger amount of the public leading to a strengthing of his association with American music. He was commissioned to write a ballet, Appalachian Spring, which later he arranged as a popular orchestra suite.

Copland was an important contributor to the film score genre. Several of the themes he created are encapsulated in the suite, Music for Movies, and his score for the film of Steinbeck's novel, The Red Pony, one of Copland's favourite scores, was given a suite of its own.

Having defended the Communist Party USA during the 1936 presidential election, Copland was investigated by the FBI during the red scare of the 1950s. In 1953, his music was pulled from President Eisenhower's inaugural concert due to the political climate; that same year Copland testified before U.S. Congress that he was never a Communist. The investigation went inactive in 1955 and was closed in 1975. Copland's membership in the party was never proven.

Aaron Copland died in his home in Peekskill, New York. --- singers.com

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1. Prairie Journal (1937) 10:55

Rodeo - Four Dance Episodes (1942)
2. Buckeroo Holiday 7:20
3. Corral Nocturne 3:41
4. Saturday Night Waltz 4:26
5. Hoe Down 3:26

6. Letter from Home (1944) 6:23

The Red Pony Suite (orchestral version) (1948)
7. I. Morning on the Ranch 4:27
8. II. The Gift 4:35
9. IIIa. Dream March 2:29
10. IIIb Circus March 2:29
11. IV. Walk to the Bunkhouse 2:58
12. V. Grandfather's Story 4:15
13. VI. Happy Ending 3:11

Buffalo Philhamonic Orchestra
JoAnn Falletta - conductor

Recorded at Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo, NY USA on January 31 and February 1, 2005

Although it's played and recorded frequently, there is a genuine difference between a decent performance of Rodeo and a really excellent one such as we have here. This difference can be summed up in two words: rhythm and tempo. When it comes to rhythm, it's not merely a question of hitting the syncopations in the opening movement and concluding Hoedown, but of being both accurate and relaxed enough to let the music swing. This is a quality that Bernstein's performances always had, and JoAnn Falletta understands it too. This gives the music both the necessary verve in the outer sections and real balletic grace in the two inner ones, reminding us that we are, after all, hearing a story told through physical movement.

When it comes to tempo, the issue is at once simpler and less impressionistic. In Buckaroo Holiday, speeds have to be quick enough to prevent the music from breaking up into discrete, detached bits. Once again, Falletta & Co. come through with flying colors. The music never sounds mechanical, disconnected, or excessively "Stravinskian". Copland disliked excessive sentimentality, but his music is never dry (the rich, warm, but clear sonics also help in this department). And what turns out to be a successful recipe for Rodeo works just as well in all of the other pieces here. Prairie Journal (a.k.a. Music for Radio) is one of the least known of Copland's "Westerns", but it's every bit as enjoyable as the three great ballets, and this is as fine a performance as you will hear anywhere. Letter from Home is an exercise in nostalgia that never turns overly sweet.

Best of all, perhaps, is The Red Pony, one of the great film scores of all time, and a glorious work that for some reason seldom gets played live. Copland's invention is of exceptionally high quality throughout, and once again you can hear from the unusual freshness of the opening bars how effortlessly Falletta and the Buffalo players get into the spirit of the music. There are so many delightful moments, from the raucous Circus Music to the unforgettable Walk to the Bunkhouse, a piece that has become the very essence of musical Americana. Finally, it's great to see one of the very popular pieces, like Rodeo, coupled with some less ubiquitous examples of Copland's genius. A wonderful disc! ---David Hurwitz

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Copland - Piano Fantasy
A1 	Piano Fantasy 	

Bartok - Three Studies, Op. 18
B1 	Allegro Molto 	
B2 	Andante Sostenuto 	
B3 	Rubato - Tempo Giusto 	

Dallapiccola - Quaderno Musicale Di Annalibera (1952)
B4 	Quaderno Musicale Di Annalibera

Antony Peebles – piano

My Piano Fantasy, completed in January of this year, is a large-scale work in one movement, lasting half an hour in performance. A long and continuous one-movement form has always seemed to me one of the most taxing assignments a composer can undertake. The word assignments perhaps ill-chosen, since this particular task was self-imposed. My idea was to attempt a composition that would suggest the quality of fantasy, that is, a spontaneous and unpremeditated sequence of "events" that would carry the listener irresistibly (if possible) from first note to last, while at the same time exemplifying clear if somewhat unconventional structural principles.

The Piano Fantasy was commissioned by the Juilliard School of Music as part of its fiftieth anniversary celebration. Because the work was not ready in time for performance, as originally planned, at the special series of concerts held in February, 1956, to memorialize that event, the Juilliard administration has arranged a special concert for its presentation on Friday. ---Aaron Copland, nytimes.com, 1957

Bela Bartok wrote his 3 etudes for piano in Rákoskeresztúr, Hungary in 1918. No 1 is a study in disjunct chromaticism; tiring to the hand. No 2, extended arpeggios and a melody in 3 octaves. No 3, rapid figurations and capriciously placed chords. Bartok admitted, "I cannot play the three Etudes. I haven't played them—ever or anywhere—since 1918." --- pianostreet.com

The compositional technique of cross partitioning is one of Luigi Dallapiccola's most used twelve-tone devices. Through a detailed analysis of three contrapuntal canonic movements from Dallapiccola's Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera, I examine his use of cross partitioning as a motivic tool and as a referential collection. The development of the BACH motive and the derivation of tone-row statements reflects on Dallapiccola's extensive use of cross partitioning and his compositional principles used to achieve a sense of polarity. Upon a preliminary analysis based on set-theory analysis set out by Joseph Straus I draw an interpretive analysis through Alegant's cross partitioning model as well as develop my own set of parameters for interpretation in regards to polarity which is based on intervallic stability. --- Jacqueline Ravensbergen, ruor.uottawa.ca

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1. Copland - Appalachian Spring (Ballet for Martha)
2. Barber – Adagio for Strings
3. Schuman - American Festival Overture
4. Bernstein - Candide Overture

Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra
Leonard Bernstein - conductor

San Francisco, Davies Symphony Hall, 24 july 1982

This recording of Appalachian Spring is vintage Bernstein. While many consider the old New York recording the standard, this performance with Los Angeles has all the same inspiration, but is much cleaner and better recorded. The Schuman overture is a nice addition. But if there is a single reason to purchase this disc, it's this mindblowing performance of Barber's Adagio for Strings. This is the definitive interpretation of the piece, masterfully performed by the LA Philharmonic strings--a performance that stands up to repeated hearings and overshadows all others. ---amazon.com

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