GRANT PARK SYMPHONY
Most people readily recognize that voice in Copland’s ballet scores and other programmatic pieces. Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, and A Lincoln Portrait, all composed in the 40s, helped establish his popularity far beyond art and intellectual circles. Exuberant as a square dance, expansive as the plains, somber as a New England church, they are deservedly classics of Americana. Copland also wrote highly evocative movie scores in the 40s, one of which, for The Heiress, garnered him an Oscar. This voice is also apparent in his nonprogrammatic music; he, along with Stravinsky, was consistently successful at making even his abstract music accessible.
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It took Copland some time to find this voice. In Paris, as Nadia Boulanger’s first full-time American pupil, he dabbled in serialism. One result was the deeply moving, dissonant Symphony for Organ and Orchestra, in which Boulanger made her American debut as organist in 1924. It was panned. One celebrated New York conductor opined: “If a young man at the age of 24 can write a symphony like that, in five years he will be ready to commit murder.”
The second movement recalls Copland’s familiar wild-west depictions. Country hoedowns alternate with folksy waltzes in a joyous celebration of American vitality. Then, almost like Dvorak, Copland introduces a pious, nostalgic set of long-breathed variations, some based on Quaker hymns–as if to unveil the spiritual side of American life. The movement concludes on a note of mystical transcendence.
