Symphony No. 3, New York Philharmonic (Leonard Bernstein, cond.)

Copland, Aaron

album cover

A Truly American Symphony

Aaron Copland wrote some of the most quintessentially "American" concert music of the twentieth century. His broad-shouldered themes ("Fanfare for the Common Man," which defines the fourth movement of this symphony) glorify hard work, determination, and grit in ways that make such things heroic, not corny. His tone poems hint at either the majestic vastness of the untamed West or, in the case of the amazing "Quiet City" appended to this disc, the desolation of urban life. His dances—the ballet Appalachian Spring, which interpolates the Shaker song "Simple Gifts," is the most famous—recast folk material in imaginative flourishes.

The Brooklyn-born Copland (1900–1990) was trained in Paris, in the studio of the legendary Nadia Boulanger. His early works flirt with jazz (a craze for many composers, including Stravinsky, in the '20s and '30s), but by the late '30s he arrived at his own "sound," in which plainspoken awshucks themes are supported by rhythmic stutter-steps and orchestral washes in sunset hues. The broad Symphony No. 3 is full of characteristic Coplandisms. Its first movement is a kind of prelude, with little fixed tempo. Here and in the subsequent sections, the declarative "Fanfare for the Common Man" theme appears in refracted form; one of Copland's gifts is his ability to assemble his melodies into tricky, yet easily identifiable, intervallic caprices. By the time the actual "Fanfare" melody arrives, early in the fourth movement, its elements have been swirling in the air for nearly thirty minutes.

The compositional scheme is heightened by this interpretation: Conductor Leonard Bernstein, whose own works were influenced by Copland, plays up the less showy underpinnings of the piece. This reading, the second of two recorded by Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic, bubbles with the wild American exuberance Copland intended. But Bernstein spends as much energy on the unglamorous nuts and bolts, which he brings to life with a cool, evenhanded competence.

Genre: Classical
Released: 1986, Deutsche Grammophon
Key Tracks: Third movement (Andantino quasi allegretto); fourth movement (Fanfare).
Catalog Choice: Bernstein Century: Billy the Kid, Appalachian Spring, and Rodeo, New York Philharmonic (Leonard Bernstein, cond.).
Next Stop: John Adams: Violin Concerto/Shaker Loops, Gidon Kremer, London Symphony Orchestra (Kent Nagano, cond.)
After That: Charles Ives: Sonata No. 2, Gilbert Kalish
Book Pages: 188–189