Morton Gould's 1957 Living Stereo recordings of two Copland ballet suites were top recommendations at the time. Since then, however, Bernstein, Slatkin, and Michael Tilson Thomas have made recordings of these works that surpass Gould's. It's not that Gould's performances are bad in any way. Indeed, there is one aspect at which Gould excels: he never lets you forget that this is dance music. And the gun battle in Billy the Kid is top-flight--Gould's snare drummer really makes his drumsticks hit like pistol shots. In addition, Gould includes a couple of items usually missing from recordings of these suites: a Waltz from Billy the Kid and a hilarious bit of honky-tonk piano in Rodeo.

Still, the other performances mentioned bring out the crackling tension of Copland's uniquely unpredictable rhythms in a way that Gould does not. Bernstein, Slatkin, and Thomas also had the advantage of working with their own top-tier permanent symphonies. Gould's, labeled as "His Orchestra", in reality was a pick-up band. Good as the players were, they lacked the musical rapport achievable by several dozen master musicians who have been together for years. In this SACD transfer, Lewis Layton's original 3-channel masters are splendid--full and clear. The Copland recordings alone would rate 9/9.

However, the 1960 Grand Canyon Suite is a step down. Musicians who play the Grand Canyon Suite have to put aside any condescension they have for the score. Let a trace of it in, which is what happens here, and the listener starts to notice its obviousness instead of its charm. Further, this version of Gould's orchestra sounds like it was made up of less-skilled--and fewer--musicians. The original mastering shows signs of excessive gain-riding and is over-pressured in tutti passages. RCA would have been better advised to include instead Gould's recording of his own Fall River Legend Suite, or Copland's own masterful recording of the Appalachian Spring Suite with the Boston Symphony.

--Joseph Stevenson