This disc, Volume 2 in John Wilson’s ongoing survey of Copland’s orchestral music on Chandos, contains some of his least well-known orchestral music, but also some of his most rewarding. There were two prior discs that gave us something similar, both on RCA. The first, from Slatkin and St. Louis, left off the Symphonic Ode but included the Dance Symphony. Next, Michael Tilson Thomas and San Francisco released a disc called “Copland: The Modernist” that omitted the Organ Symphony but featured the Piano Concerto. You may not be able to find those earlier releases, but if you can, those are your choices.
The present release, in the event, is very good, better than the first volume of more popular stuff if only because the repertoire is less overexposed. The Organ Symphony, which Tilson Thomas did get around to (excellently) on the San Francisco Symphony’s proprietary label, is extremely well played and recorded here. Jonathan Scott’s registrations are sensitively chosen to combine and contrast with the orchestra, and the instrument itself sounds marvelous. Both the Orchestral Variations and the Symphonic Ode also receive impressive readings, perhaps not quite as sharp and angular as the music could be, but this is only an issue–and not a big one–in the outer movements of the Short Symphony, one of Copland’s very greatest works. Throughout, Wilson’s pacing is expert.
As already suggested, the sonics are typically spacious, perhaps a bit too much so for the Short Symphony’s chamber music textures, but then again its slow movement has remarkable warmth in this performance, and there’s always the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra if you want to hear the music at its most pungently incisive. A very enjoyable release.
