Copland: Music for Films

Aaron Copland (Composer), Leonard Slatkin (Conductor), Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Orchestra: Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra
• Conductor: Leonard Slatkin
• Composer: Aaron Copland
• Audio CD (April 12, 1994)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: RCA
• ASIN: B000003FHI
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,809 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #25 in Music > Classical > Historical Periods > Modern, 20th, & 21st Century > Forms & Genres > Symphonies
  • #67 in Music > Classical > Historical Periods > Modern, 20th, & 21st Century > Composers

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yeah Copland and St. Louis!, January 20, 2000

By 

Gregory M. Zinkl (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Copland: Music for Films (Audio CD)

Recently rehearsing the Red Pony and Our Town in a mostly undergraduate orchestra, I was struck by how absolutely foreign the music seemed to the players. I made the (rash) assumption that this musical idiom would be so ingrained in American-trained instrumentalist...So tellingly different than my experiences at the age, where I played Copland several times a year. Let's hope my obesrvation is just an anomaly, and that his music lives on. It deserves to!

Well, with recordings like this one, Copland's legacy has a good advocate! This Midwestern orchestra just shines in this kind of music--the strings are sweet, but yet balance that sweetness with a clarity that is jaw-dropping. For example, I don't think Ormandy's incredible Philadelphia players would be as idiomatic in this music as St. Louis. Philly's warm tone, so apt in the music of the late Romantics, would just get in the way of Copland's wonderful orchestration.

What can I add? Slatkin stays out of Copland's music's way, which is all to the good. Don't mess with perfection! The Red Pony is great fun. Our Town is moving. The Heiress Suite is fine, but not my favorite Copland. Music for Films is music that communicates so well what the different movements are supposed to depict...etc. Great sound, too.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Buy!, July 3, 2000

By 

Mr. Christian Lauliac (Paris France) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Copland: Music for Films (Audio CD)

This is the definitive sampler of Aaron Copland's film scores. I listen to this superlative album almost every week. The performance by the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Slatkin is simply stellar and the selections include every note the composer ever wrote for the silver screen. The CD opens with the justifiably popular suite from "The Red Pony", one of the most distinguished American film scores of the forties. Its down-home atmosphere and nostalgic undertones are quite infectious. The wonderful Americana atmosphere of "Our Town" is both moving and gentle. A true piece of musical poetry. There is also a world premiere recording of Copland's Academy Award-winning score for "The Heiress", another wonderful display of the composer's gift for American lyricism. Leonard Slatkin rivals other famous Copland champions such as Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tillson-Thomas for the sheer pastoral beauty he is able to bring forth in the composer's music. Mr. Slatkin's conducting is filled with the appropriate amount of intimacy and power and his orchestra perform with incredible gusto. The "Music for the Movies" suite includes two excerpts from the "Of Mice and Men" score: a gentle and unforgettable musical portrait of John Steinbeck's Salinas country. In short, this CD belongs to every music lover's library. Sound quality is spacious and full-blooded. Don't pass up this one!

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great recording of definitive American film music, April 7, 2004

By 

chefdevergue (Spokane, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Copland: Music for Films (Audio CD)

In a way, filmgoers have been listening to Copland's film scores nearly every time they go to the cinema, since film composers have been shamelessly ripping off Copland for the last half-century or so. When you listen to the "Our Town" suite, do you get the nagging feeling that you have heard this music somewhere before? No doubt you have, in dozens of derivitave film scores from the 1980's and 1990's, sometimes (shamelessly) right down to the exact chord progressions.

How nice it is then to be able to go back to the source, and have rendered in so superb a fashion as it is by Slatkin & the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Slatkin, as usual, upholds his reputation as one of the leading interpreters of American music.

This CD contains the premier recording of "The Heiress Suite," which is a delight to listen to, and of course the fairly well-known "Red Pony" music. Is their a more quintessential piece of "Western" music than the "Walk to the Bunkhouse?" How does a jewish boy from Brooklyn nail it on the head so perfectly, anyway?

Other selections include "Music for Movies," a collection of bits & pieces from an assortment of Copland-scored movies that Copland arranged in 1943, and "Music for Radio," an earlier composition that isn't really "movie music," but fits well with the rest of the compositions on this CD.

Instead of wasting your time on movie soundtracks that are nothing more than just derivitave hack jobs, listen to music by a composer who had truly mastered his craft.