Copland: Chamber Works - Dennis Russell Davies

 

Sonata for Violin and Piano

I. Andante semplice 07:39
II. Lento 05:08
III. Allegretto giusto 06:47


Vitebsk - Study on a Jewish Theme 13:15


Piano Quartet

I. Adagio serio 07:13
II. Allegro giusto 07:49
III. Non troppo lento 06:59

Superlatives are always dangerous, but it seems safe to say that Aaron Copland is probably the most important and influential composer that the United States has yet produced. Over the course of a career that spanned half a century, this tall, modest, bespectacled man became a virtual embodiment of American music in all of its guises. He wrote symphonies, ballets, operas, sonatas and songs, in styles that were now folkish and friendly, now austere, urban and modernist, yet always retaining a distinctive sensibility, one that was his alone. Moreover, Copland is one of the few composers of his time held in equal esteem by professional musicians and the general public. Such works as El salon Mexico, Billy the Kid, Fanfare for the Common Man and Rodeo have entered the standard repertory -­ classics all, and as distinctively American as Huckleberry Finn. Yet Copland is, in one sense, a neglected composer, for the vast majority of his music -­- including virtually everything he wrote before 1930 or after mid-century --­ remains unknown to the public at large. Unfairly so, for there are masterpieces throughout the Copland canon, from the brash, jazzy and once-shocking early works (when Walter Damrosch led the first performance of Copland's Organ Symphony, he turned to the audience and said, "If a young man at the age of 23 can write a symphony like that, in five years he will be ready to commit murder!"), through late works such as The Tender Land (which critic B.H. Haggin thought one of the three great American operas) and the splendidly assured Piano Fantasy, composed in memory of William Kapell. This disc contains three works by Copland which have been long admired by musicians but have never fully entered the standard literature.