Fanfare for the Common Man - Copland
Appalachian Spring - Copland
Piano Concerto - Copland
Ceremonial Fanfare - Copland
El Salon Mexico - Copland
Dance Episodes from Rodeo - Copland
The National Symphony Orchestra's celebration of the centenary of the birth of Aaron Copland concentrated on the more popular, indeed populist, end of his output. The fact that the composer adopted 12-tone techniques in the latter half of his career was glossed over in favour of a selection of pieces chosen for their toe-tapping tunefulness.
There were two non-standard intrusions into the sequence of Copland favourites. The Ceremonial Fanfare of 1969 was guaranteed to highlight the exceptionally striking character of the familiar Fanfare for the Common Man, which opened the concert. For Copland, this was definitely an instance of lightning not striking twice.
It was in the earliest work of the evening, the Piano Concerto of 1926, that the tougher side of Copland's musical character was allowed expression. This piece shocked some of its early hearers, and, jostling with jazzy infusions, there are still moments which have the impact of an intentionally unrhymed limerick, or a crude expression hauled in for its shock value. The soloist, Philip Martin, dug sound impressively out of his keyboard, working hard, with results that won him a resounding cheer.
The conductor George Cleve handled the music with an easy familiarity. There were a few glaring technical glitches in the playing, but on the whole everything worked with unobtrusive efficiency. No one attending the concert could have been in any doubt as to why Copland was such a widely appreciated composer. And that, I suspect, was exactly what the programming set out to demonstrate.
