William Dart reviews the latest classical CDs

NZ Herald

18 Aug, 2017 05:00 PM2 mins to read

Copland, Symphony No.3 (Naxos)

I'm no lover of lists but any American symphonic roll call would have to place Aaron Copland's Third Symphony firmly in its upper echelons. Serge Koussevitzky, who conducted its 1946 premiere, certainly had no hesitation in putting it right at the top.

For Copland this was an end-of-war piece, reflecting the euphoric spirit of the USA at the time. Leonard Bernstein later hailed it as an American monument, on a scale with the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial but, after conducting it in 1947, he suggested some re-writing was in order.

"Sweetie, the end is a sin," Bernstein wrote to Copland. "You've got to change."

The obedient Copland acquiesced but this new Naxos recording, from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin, returns to the composer's original version and offers the opportunity to hear his first thoughts.

Musicological issues needn't concern the general listener and I, for one, am certainly grateful for the extra minutes added to its splendid finale.

This music is Copland at his most approachable, written in the wake of his popular ballets, with the bracing plein-air ambiance of Appalachian Spring hanging over its third movement.

Bolder still is the important role that Fanfare for the Common Man plays in the final Molto deliberato.

The recording, produced by Grammy-winning Blanton Alspaugh in the DSO's Orchestra Hall, is first-rate, catching the crystalline strands of its Andantino and adding the requisite thrill factor to the many surging climaxes elsewhere.

Alongside this major offering, clocking in at just over 45 minutes, is a later Copland charmer, his 1971 Three Latin American Sketches. The composer had travelled south of the border before, notably in El Salon Mexico, and these short pieces, written for chamber-size forces, are beautifully gauged by the Detroit players.

Although it's not acknowledged, minor background noise suggests that this might well be a live recording from October 2013; if so, one can imagine the deluge of applause that followed the final piece.