Customer Reviews

Copland: Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid Suite, etc.

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Have only heard Rodeo, but it's worth the price of the CD. Clean, crisp, balanced, rhythmic, brassy. The only recording I've ever heard where the oboe solo in the Hoedown has presence and doesn't sound like the oboist was playing offstage.

Eugene Ormandy draws Appalachian Spring's sounds out of the great Philadelphia Orchestra like no other conductor has ever performed this Copland warhorse. Countless conductors and orchestras have offered up this piece in as many textures as you will find in the hundreds of cloths from the looms of the world. Some performances have sounded like burlap, others like thick cotton, others like damask, still more like linen, denim, corduroy, carpet and towel. But this Ormandy-Philadelphia performance is like a heavy silk brocade, rich, sumptuous and thick with sounds that come only rarely from orchestras whose players and sections play so gorgeously together as to give us sounds unheard in the vast sea of mediocre performances of this piece. Listen to the entrances, the unisons, the harmonies, partnerings, contrastings, shadings among and across players, voices and sections ( especially the woodwinds and the strings ) and you'll hear the orchestral art in its highest form. Play this performance for any musician or conductor whom you know and just watch how they react to this one. So far, this one is the performance for the ages.

There is not a lot to get excited about in this RCA "High Performance" reissue of the works of Aaron Copland. The Ormandy pieces have been available on CD before (not sure about the Mata though), and the remastered sound does not offer any new revelations when comparing the "Billy the Kid" Suite here to its earlier incarnation on RCA Gold Seal (which includes performances conducted by Copland himself -- a better buy!). In general Ormandy's recordings for CBS from the late 1950s and early 60s (now widely available in the Sony Essential Classics series -- I have written numerous reviews), are much better than his later recordings for RCA from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Even though the Philadelphia Orchestra still shines, there must have been something more fun about doing it the first time around for Ormandy. Mata, on the other hand, is clearly a rung below Ormandy and his performances are quite honestly second rate. With so many other classic Copland titles available, many with the conductor himself or the next best thing, Leonard Bernstein (sometimes the composer even preferred Bernstein to himself!), why would you settle for this CD?

Eugene Ormandy obviously knew he was stepping on Bernstein's toes by recording Copland's most famous score. Nobody involved could have thought that Ormandy's polite, rhythmically mild Appalachina Spring came close, and his Billy the Kid never hurt anyone in his life. But back then Ormandy was nearly as big a name with the record-buying public as Bernstein, and his fans wouldn't care. As a result, we get gorgeous playing frorm the orchestra and impactful sound--though not the best that Living Stereo has to offer--all in service of very dull performances.

For me, the main attraction was hearing Edurdo Mata's contribution. This talented Mexican maestro died young, and I missed him the first time around. He conducts a lively four scenes from Copland's Rodeo ballet , by far the best thing here, but his El Salon Mexico (ironically for a native-born musician) sounds anemic next to Bernstein's.