Make no mistake: this
is an important release. Everything
Copland wrote for two to six players
- all of it interesting music, and much
of it inspired! - played with unique
authority by expert devotees of the
composer, faithfully recorded in an
agreeable acoustic, and handsomely packaged
as a CD-duo with a most informative
booklet.
The music included
here spans Copland’s entire creative
career, from 1923 to 1971, and embraces
his early French influences, his jazz
and modernist phases as well as his
dabblings with 12-tone technique. Only
his engagement with folk music is under-represented
here. You’ll find here all the "sober
expressivity, brash exuberance, lean
textures, spiky rhythmic energy, rugged
elegance and poised dignity" (I quote
from Michael Boriskin’s liner notes)
which typify the composer at his best.
The early Movement
for string quartet was a student work,
written for his teacher, Nadia Boulanger.
Even here, we can recognise the generative
small motivic gesture of its opening
phrase as being quintessentially Copland,
even if its sombre European harmonic
flavour reveals its immaturity.
Interesting that the
last section of that piece should be
re-cast (or ‘re-contextualised’) as
the Prelude of the Symphony
for Organ and Orchestra, and that
this ‘new’ Prelude should in time be
rescored as an isolated movement for
Piano Trio. This constant development
and recycling of material is typical
of a composer whose music seems to have
been forever on the move, progressing
forward in search of new challenges
and new solutions.
The Two Pieces for
Violin and Piano inhabit the same
racy sound world as the contemporary
Music for the Theatre and Piano
Concerto - the languorous Nocturne
contrasting with the raucous Ukulele
Serenade. Both very much products
of their time.
The tranquil and simply-conceived
Vocalise was, like the similarly-named
piece by Rachmaninov, a wordless song
for voice and piano until, in 1968,
forty years on, Copland made a transcription
(for Doriot Anthony Dwyer of the Boston
Symphony Orchestra) for flute. An attractive
piece which sticks in the memory.
The1928 slow movement
for string quartet, with its memorable
major-minor harmonic backcloth, was
joined by the quirky Rondino
of five years earlier to form the Two
Pieces for String Quartet. Light-worlds
from Bartók’s Fourth, of the
same year, but a worthwhile addition
to the repertory.
Vitebsk is built
around a Hasidic song, and is intended
to evoke "the harshness and drama of
Jewish life". Despite its boisterous
central section, it remains a stark
and tragic piece which, with its biting
quarter tones, embodies an intellectualism
which exemplifies the composer’s late-20s
stylistic wanderings. Rather heavy going,
but its sincerity cannot be doubted.
The Sextet -
a simplified re-scoring of the Short
Symphony - is another manifestation
of the same modernist phase. But this
time, it is its experimentation with
jazz-inspired rhythmic complexities
(rather than its harmonic language)
which provokes our attention. Indeed,
in its orchestral guise, neither Koussevitsky
nor Stokowski could be persuaded to
take it on, on account of its rhythmic
difficulties, and Chavez demanded all
of ten rehearsals for its eventual 1934
premiere! A tour de force, and
very expertly rendered here!
The effervescent Violin
Sonata comes midway (stylistically
and chronologically) between Fanfare
for the Common Man and Appalachian
Spring, and - if only the CD-buying
public were to take to chamber music
as they do orchestral music - could
be every bit as popular. This is the
Copland of fresh air and open spaces.
With essentially diatonic material and
transparent textures, this is extremely
attractive music, exhibiting all the
wealth of expert management which typifies
Copland’s best.
The Piano Quartet
- Copland’s first extended attempt at
12-tone composition - marks yet another
period of renewal. Although introspective
and mostly elegiac in character, this
music is no nearer to Schoenberg’s Second
Viennese School than Stravinsky’s exactly
contemporary excursions into serialism.
Indeed, Copland and Stravinsky - both
diatonicists, with none of Schoenberg’s
‘need’ for serialism - would appear
to have regarded this ‘style’ of composition
as no more than a short-term discipline.
The late Duo
harkens back to the homespun idiom of
the Violin Sonata. In turns pastoral,
wistful and poignant, but often expressively
energetic, this music took four years
to write, but (typically) flows like
water. The Threnodies (‘In Memoria’
for Stravinsky and Beatrice Cunningham)
were among Copland’s last music.
Music for Copland House
is led by and admirably managed by pianist
Michael Boriskin. There are no weaknesses
in the cast. Everything is played with
complete technical mastery, and with
the most sympathetic understanding of
the composer’s expressive objectives.
It adds up to a most enjoyable and instructive
listening experience. Lovers of Copland
should not hesitate to buy. Nor should
those of you with your one (supposedly
‘representative’) Copland CD on your
shelves, or anyone else who is interested
in this most fascinating 50-year period
in music history, where ‘anything went’.
It’s all here, and it’s all good stuff.
Peter J Lawson
Music from Copland House (Derek Bermel, clarinet;
Michael Boriskin, piano; Paul Lustig Dunkel, flute;
Nicholas Kitchen, violin; Wilhelmina Smith, cello)
with the Borromeo String Quartet (Nicholas Kitchen
and Will Fedkenheuer, violins; Mai Motobuchi,
viola; Yeesun Kim, cello), Jennifer Frautschi
(Sextet) and Curtis Mocomber (Prelude), violins;
Hsin-Yun Huang (Quartet and Threnodies) and Cynthia
Phelps (Sextet), violas 
