Post Description

This handsomely recorded CD - the clarity of Copland's "American" scoring has rarely been so well captured - pairs two well-known pieces, "The Red Pony" and "Rodeo," with two less familiar, "Prairie Journal" and "Letter From Home." The 1937 "Prairie Journal" is alternately lively and thoughtful, and all of it, as usual, has that wide-open-spaces sound to it. The slides on the trombones and "clop-clop" of Copland's percussion are wonderfully clear (though integrated) in the accounts of "Buckaroo Holiday" from Rodeo, and the other three dances from that work contain quotes from old American tunes that evoke the American West in Copland's own, special, expansive yet shiny and bright way. The "Hoe Down" is a rollicking reading. "Letter from Home" is meant to evoke just that: the feeling a soldier might get reading a letter from home. It could be called corny, but its brevity (six minutes), faraway-feeling trumpet part and mid-piece victorious fanfare won't allow for any triteness. And the film score "The Red Pony" is remarkable not only for its scoring and textures but for the fact that while it does not contain quotes from any real folk songs, Copland manages to write tunes that seem to be coming from America's collective memory. JoAnn Falletta leads the excellent Buffalo Philharmonic in performances that actually might be danced to. She affords the music the stature it deserves--this CD is a delight. --Robert Levine
A Penguin Rosette Recording.