Customer Reviews

William Schuman: In Praise of Shahn / Aaron Copland: Connotations / Roger Sessions: Suite from "The Black Maskers" - The Juilliard Orchestra

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

 

 

This is really a very remarkable CD, especially for the first two items. Otto Mueller carves out the In Praise of Shahn from musical granite. There is a heady and severe coldness to the music which is masterful and invigorating. It doesn't remind me of Ben Shahn's art very much at all -- it seems cut from the same cloth as Schuman's Eighth symphony -- but maybe it is like Shahn's uncompromising intellectual stance in matters political. The Copland Connotations is projected with a kind of outrageous breadth for such, to my ears, genius miserliness in late Copland's music. In a way this is the same Copland of the Piano Variations and Piano Fantasy, But it is pared down. Sixten Ehrling's reading hits the aesthetic bulls-eye for this more spare, but somehow still unavoidably romantic music. I believe that Bernstein premiered the piece, and though I have never heard his performance of it, if such exists, I am quite sure I would not like it nearly as much.