Film Music from Copland and Thomson

 Paris 1925: Virgil Thomson, Walter Piston, 
Herbert Elwell, Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson, two of the leading American composers of the 20th century, wrote some of their most appealing works for films.

The film scores of Copland, the more famous composer, are actually not as well known as his popular masterpieces such as Appalachian Spring, while many of Thomson's most recognized pieces were for the cinema.

This post brings together newly remastered versions of works by both composers in the film realm. All appeared here originally many years ago.

Apropos of the photo above, there also are links to works by the Americans Walter Piston and Herbert Elwell. All four composers studied with Nadia Boulanger in 1920s Paris.

For the film compositions herein, Copland and Thomson worked in a relatively simple, accessible idioms for works that centered on rural life. Their music can be contrasted with the urban focus of John Alden Carpenter's ballet score Skyscrapers, which recently appeared here, or some of George Gershwin's works.

Copland - Our Town; Thomson - The Plow That Broke the Plains

This 10-inch LP from 1951 brings together suites from scores by the two composers under the direction of Thomas Scherman and his Little Orchestra Society. Both are treasurable and both are in very good performances.

Thomas Scherman

Copland's music is from 1940. Vivian Perlis has written: "With the threat of impending war, Thornton Wilder's play Our Town, with its look back at an America of homespun values, was tremendously appealing. Copland accepted the invitation to compose the musical score for the screen version of life in the small town of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. He explained, 'For the film version, they were counting on the music to translate the transcendental aspects of the story. I tried for clean and clear sounds and in general used straight-forward harmonies and rhythms that would project the serenity and sense of security of the story.'" The orchestral suite is from 1944.

The Plow That Broke the Plains was a Pare Lorentz documentary from 1936 that was sponsored by the US Resettlement Administration. Its purpose was to provide the background for the dust storms then devastating the Southwest. The centerprice of Thomson's suite is a memorably sarcastic piece called "Blues (Speculation)," followed by "Drought" and "Devastation."

LINK to Our Town and The Plow That Broke the Plains

Copland - The Red Pony; Thomson - Acadian Songs and Dances

Decca soon would follow up the coupling above with a 12-inch LP that combined Copland's music for The Red Pony with Thomson's Acadian Songs and Dances from the film Louisiana Story. Both films are from 1948.

Vivian Perlis writes about The Red Pony: "The film was adapted from a novel by John Steinbeck and featured famous Hollywood stars. But it was not a commercial success, and Copland's practical nature led him to recast the musical material for concert purposes. The Suite is in six sections with titles that match the action of the film. Although the melodies have a folklike quality, they are Copland's own."

While Louisiana Story was directed by the documentarian Robert Flaherty, it is a fictional work. The film was sponsored by the Standard Oil Co., although its name does not appear in the credits. The story concerns a boy, his pet raccoon, and friendly oil drillers. Thomson's Acadian Songs and Dances, which make up one of the two suites from the film, are delightful. The second suite from Louisiana Story is below.

LINK to The Red Pony and Acadian Songs and Dances

Thomson - Suite from Louisiana Story and Five Portraits

Thomson's suite from Louisiana Story contains music that was not derived from folk sources. The Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy had recorded the score for the film, and these experts for Columbia. Thomson's music was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1949.

The coupling is a suite of Five Portraits of the composer's friends, the best known of whom are Pablo Picasso and the composer Alexander Smallens. Thomson himself conducts the Philadelphians in this 1945 recording.

The transfer is from an early 10-inch LP. (Thanks to Joe Serraglio for the use of his transfer!)

LINK to Louisiana Story and Five Portraits

Thomson - Suite from The River; Luening - Prelude, Two Symphonic Interludes

Thomson's other famous film score is for another Pare Lorentz documentary, The River, from 1937. It was this score that particularly influenced Copland, who called it "a lesson in how to treat Americana." The river here is the Mississippi and the sponsor of the film was the New Deal's Works Progress Administration. The opening theme of the "The Old South" is perhaps the composer's most familiar music.

Walter Hendl, Dean Dixon

The performance here is a good one, by the Vienna Symphony and the American conductor Walter Hendl.

Otto Luening

This early American Recording Society LP also contains works by the American composer Otto Luening, who became known for his tape and electronic works but in earlier times wrote in an accessible style that produced the Prelude on a Hymn Tune by William Billings and Two Symphonic Interludes. Here, the unidentified orchestra is conducted by the American Dean Dixon. Again, the performances are good.

LINK to The River and music by Otto Luening

Music by Walter Piston and Herbert Elwell

The composer Walter Piston has appeared here a number of times:

Howard Hanson's recording of the Symphony No. 3 is here, along with works by Wallingford Riegger, Alan Hovhaness and Henry Cowell.

The Incredible Flutist, Piston's most famous score, can be found in two recordings, both by the Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler:

• The 1954 recording is part of a collection called The Ballet, with works by Meyerbeer, Stravinsky, Ravel and Weber.

• The 1939 recording is here, along with MacDowell's Piano Concerto No. 2 (with soloist Jesús María Sanromá) and Piston's orchestration of the Moonlight Sonata's first movement.

The blog featured Herbert Elwell's music very recently: a recording of his best-known work, the ballet score The Happy Hypocrite. That same score also appeared in suite form by the Cleveland Pops Orchestra and Louis Lane. The latter post also includes a private recording of Elwell's Blue Symphony.

Vaughan Williams, Mendelssohn-Moscheles, Copland - Works for Two Pianos

Here is another transfer prepared as the result of a request. It features four unusual compositions for two pianos, including the premiere recording of a very good piece from Ralph Vaughan Williams.

The transfer comes from a circa 1979 LP issued by the American label Orion. Performing are two pianists who often recorded for that label - Evelinde Trenkner and Vladimir Pleshakov - although they appeared only one other time as a duo.

Vladimir Pleshakov and Evelinde Trenkner 

The major work on the first side is Vaughan Williams' Introduction and Fugue for Two Pianos, dating from 1946, between the composer's fifth and sixth symphonies.

In his sleeve note, Pleshakov writes, "The musical language is complex, a reflection of the composer's personality. There is an ever-present conflict between the lyricism implicit in his essentially vocal themes and the drama of his symphonic architecture. This very conflict generates the possibility of great and sublime music."

The other major work on the LP is a joint effort by Felix Mendelssohn and Ignaz Moscheles, the Variations on a Theme from Preciosa by Weber. Preciosa is an 1821 play by Pius Alexander Wolff with incidental music by Carl Maria von Weber. These days, only the overture is heard, and that only occasionally.

The music is never less than interesting, although it was essentially an occasional piece for performance by the two friends. This could well have been its first recording.

Filling out the two sides of the record are transcriptions by Aaron Copland from two of his early works. The Dance of the Adolescent is an arrangement of the first movement of his Dance Symphony. The Danza de Jalisco is based on one of the Two Mexican Pieces (which would become the Three Latin American Sketches).

The performances and sound are very good. Evelinde Trenkner (1933-2021) was a German pianist and piano teacher who often appeared in the duo piano repertory. Vladimir Pleshakov (1934- ) was born in Shanghai to Russian parents but has been resident in the US since 1955, receiving a doctorate from Stanford University.

Fiedler Conducts Grofé, Gershwin and Copland

This post is the result of a request for my help in cleaning up a noisy Internet Archive transfer. The record is Grofé's Grand Canyon Suite, in the recording by the Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler.

It seems that this is something of a rare item, at least in its stereo incarnation. Apparently it has appeared only twice - on a stereo tape and then on this RCA Victrola reissue.

The original mono issue

The suite was a relatively early exercise in stereo recording by the RCA engineers. It dates from a June 25, 1955 session in Symphony Hall that also produced a reading of Copland's El Salón México, its discmate on the original Red Seal mono issue. You may well have seen the mono LP. It was popular, with its striking photo of the Grand Canyon - much to be preferred to the stereo cover, which has a fuzzy photo of the Pops superimposed on a denatured Grand Canyon.

So, you may ask, why didn't the Victrola reissue include the Copland? I'm not sure, but I don't believe the Copland has ever appeared in stereo, and the Victrola folks must have wanted to include another two-channel recording as a coupling. Thus the inclusion of the 1963 Pops recording of An American in Paris.

RCA has reissued El Salón México in the ersatz "electronic stereo" format, so its stereo master may have been lost or damaged. Or the work may have not been recorded in stereo, although that seems unlikely.

Too bad, because the Grand Canyon Suite is quite a good early stereo recording. These early examples of two-channel recording used simple microphone setups and can provide a convincing facsimile of an orchestra in a concert hall. That's more than can be said of the Gershwin recording, which, while punchy, sounds nothing like the "real thing."

Arthur Fiedler

The download includes the Grofé, Gershwin and Copland works, the latter in unmolested mono, along with the usual scans and reviews. The performances are good, with the characteristic Fiedler drive that never turns brusque.

American Music with Foldes and Winograd

Today's subject - as it often is around here - is mid-century American music. The sources are two albums that are not often seen. The first is an anthology of piano works by eight composers performed by an artist whom I did not associate with this repertoire - Andor Foldes. The second is the first recording of Aaron Copland's Music for Movies, coupled with a suite derived from three of Kurt Weill's American musicals, as conducted by Arthur Winograd on one of his many M-G-M LPs.

Andor Foldes Plays Contemporary American Music

I was surprised to discover this 1947 album of Andor Foldes (1913-92) playing American piano music. I associate his name with the music of his teacher Bartók and other stalwarts of the European canon. He was, however, a naturalized American citizen, having emigrated here in the 1930s, remaining until he returned to Europe in 1960 for professional reasons.

Foldes' 1941 debut in New York was devoted to Bach-Busoni, Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, Bartók and Kodaly, but by the time of his 1947 Town Hall program, he had added works by the Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson and Paul Bowles to the mix, likely the items on this Vox album.

In addition to the three Americans, the Vox collection includes short works by Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and William Schuman. These were among the first recordings of these compositions.

The album was also among the first from the now-venerable American Vox label. (There had been a German Vox earlier in the century.) The US company started up in 1945, and made this recording the following year, per A Classical Discography. The resulting set apparently did not come out until 1947, when it was reviewed late in the year both in the New York Times and Saturday Review. Both brief notices are in the download, along with reviews of Foldes' 1941 and 1947 recitals.

Andor Foldes

The album reviews were good; the recital notices were mixed. Foldes was praised for his accuracy, but at least in 1941, the recital reviewer found his sound hard and his playing loud. By 1947, this had moderated into the notion that his secco tone was well suited to the contemporary repertoire, borne out by these recordings.

Copland - Music for Movies; Weill - Music for the Stage

Conductor Arthur Winograd (1920-2010), once the cellist of the Juilliard String Quartet, made any number of recordings for the M-G-M label in the 1950s, when it was active in the classical realm. Quite a good conductor, Winograd these days is remembered primarily for his long tenure as the head of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra.

This particular recording dates from 1956 and was made with the "M-G-M Chamber Orchestra," probably a New York studio group. The LP combines two appealing scores, one prepared by the composer, the second by other hands following the composer's death.

Aaron Copland's Music for Movies, which comes from 1942, assembles themes he wrote for The City, Of Mice and Men and Our Town. The best - and best known - are "New England Countryside" from The City and "Grovers Corners" from Our Town. I believe this was the first recording of this suite in orchestral form, although "Grovers Corners" had been recorded on piano twice - including by Andor Foldes in the album above, under the name "Story of Our Town." The other recording, by Leo Smit, is available on this blog in a remastered version. It is from a 1946-47 Concert Hall Society album Smit shared with Copland himself.

Arthur Winograd at work

Kurt Weill's Music for the Stage was arranged for this recording by M-G-M recording director Edward Cole and composer Marga Richter, whose own music has appeared here. The arrangers followed Weill's own procedure, utilized in Kleine Dreigroschenmusik, of employing the theater arrangements while substituting a solo instrument for any vocal lines. It works seamlessly for this suite assembled from lesser-known (to me, anyway) items from Johnny Johnson (three pieces), Lost in the Stars and Lady in the Dark (one each).

Contemporary reviewer Alfred Frankenstein pronounced the Copland suite to be effective and the Weill "trash," strange considering that the latter composer influenced the former. Reviewers were more to the point back then, and held (or at least expressed) stronger opinions.

Frankenstein also opined that the "recording and performance are of the best." I can agree with the latter judgment, but the recording is another matter. It was close and harsh, so I have added a small amount of reverberation to moderate those qualities. [Note (July 2023): these files have now been remastered in ambient stereo.]

By the way, Winograd had almost no conducting experience when he began recording for M-G-M. Edward Cole had turned up at a Juilliard concert that Winograd conducted, was impressed, and offered him a recording session. This anecdote is contained in an interview with the conductor included in the download. Also on this blog, Winograd can be heard conducting music by Paul Bowles.

Both these recordings were cleaned up from lossless needle drops found on Internet Archive.

LINK

Bernstein Conducts Gershwin and Copland

I wanted to mark the centenary  of Leonard Bernstein's birth, but it is difficult to find a recording by him that hasn't been reissued, with the possible exception of the obscurities I have uploaded previously.

So I decided to explore some of his earliest LPs, starting with this RCA Victor album.  It presents Bernstein's first thoughts on two composers with whom he is identified - George Gershwin and Aaron Copland. Gershwin died while Bernstein was at Harvard, but Copland was a lifelong friend and influence.

Bernstein and Copland in 1945

Bernstein was still a young man when these records were made in 1947 and 1949, but he clearly has his own ideas about the scores, both of which he puts across convincingly.

His An American in Paris provides a nice contrast to the Paul Whiteman version I uploaded last week. I believe it uses the version of Gershwin's own scoring revised by his publisher after the composer's death. Bernstein handles the Copland's Billy the Kid music beautifully. You can hear a few echoes of the score in Bernstein's own theater music.

These recordings are with the so-called "RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra," apparently composed of New York players assembled for the two sessions.  The performances are generally very fine, although the pick-up orchestra lacks the personality of Whiteman's musicians. The sound is pleasing, if a trifle boomy and with a few odd balances.

Early Copland and Gould Recordings, Plus Reups

My recent post of a Copland for children record on my other blog reminded me I wanted to offer this 10-inch album that couples early recordings of music by Aaron Copland and Morton Gould.

For the LP issue, Columbia top-billed the first recording of Gould's Spirituals for Orchestra, even though its companion item, Copland's Lincoln Portrait, has turned out to be a far more popular composition than the Gould, worthy though that may be.

Cover of 78 set

Both recordings date from 1946, the Copland from February and March sessions, and the Gould from May, with the New York Philharmonic under the characteristically taut direction of its then-music director, Artur Rodziński. The sound from Carnegie Hall is excellent.

The sonorous narrator in the Lincoln Portrait is actor-singer Kenneth Spencer, who at the time was on Broadway in an acclaimed revival of Show Boat. In the previous few years, Spencer had been in several films, including A Walk in the Sun, whose soundtrack turned up on this blog last year. Spencer moved to Germany in 1950.

1947 ad

A few words about the performance history of A Lincoln Portrait. This was its second recording; the first was by Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony, only a few weeks before Rodziński and the New Yorkers. The work had been written in 1942, through a commission by Andre Kostelanetz, and premiered by the Cincinnati Symphony. Kostelanetz himself did not record it until 1958.

I mentioned that this was the first recording of Gould's Spirituals. The second recording appeared on this blog some years ago, emanating from the unlikely source of the Hague Philharmonic and Willem van Otterloo. Gould himself did not get to tape it until 1965, when he led the Chicago Symphony for RCA Victor. Then in 1978 he conducted the London Philharmonic in a direct-to-disc effort for Crystal Clear.

Now on to a few reups.

Raymond Scott - Raymond Scott's Drawing Room (remastered). An early LP compiling some of Scott's best known compositions in their 1930s recordings, including those cartoon staples "Powerhouse" and "The Toy Trumpet." (Also see my other blog for a recent post of a Scott-scored trip to the moon.)

So This is Paris (OST). Tony Curtis warbles on this obscure soundtrack from a 1954 musical. Also features Gloria De Haven and Gene Nelson, who actually could sing.

Danny Thomas and Peggy Lee - Songs from The Jazz Singer (remastered). In 1952, the Warner Bros. figured they would remake The Jazz Singer and cast a non-singer in the lead role. What could go wrong? You can find out here, in this, another obscure soundtrack (actually "songs from the film"), with Danny Thomas, who was long on charm but short on chops. I've added the three songs from the film recorded for another label by co-star Peggy Lee, who, again, actually could sing.

The links above lead to the original posts. Download links are in the comments there; also in the comments to this post.

Columbia goes overboard for Rodziński in 1945 ad

Louis Lane Conducts American Composers, Plus a Bonus

To mark the death of conductor Louis Lane, I recently shared on another site my transfer of Lane's 1961 Epic LP, "Music for Young America," made with the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, at that time the summer incarnation of the Cleveland Orchestra. Lane was the longtime assistant, associate and resident conductor of the Cleveland ensemble, during the Szell years.

I thought I might also make it available here, together with a substantial bonus of more music by Cleveland-related composers (see below).

Louis Lane

The performances in Lane's program of music by conservative American composers are finely judged and clean cut, a fitting tribute to an excellent musician and the superb Cleveland ensemble.

It may be a little ironic that the chosen “Music for Young America” was composed by five older composers, two of whom had already passed away at the time of the recording. But that doesn’t take away from the quality of the works themselves. The most familiar is Aaron Copland’s “An Outdoor Overture,” followed by the suite from Gian Carlo Menotti’s "Amahl and the Night Visitors." Wallingford Riegger’s “Dance Rhythms,” unlike many of his other works, is tonal.

The second side is devoted to two Cleveland composers. Herbert Elwell, longtime critic of The Plain Dealer, is represented by his most frequently performed work, the ballet suite from "The Happy Hypocrite." Finally, there is “The Old Chisholm Trail” from Arthur Shepherd’s suite “Horizons” (I believe Shepherd designated it as his Symphony No. 1), a relatively early example of Americana, dating from 1926.

To make the Cleveland connection complete, the informative liner notes are by Klaus Roy, longtime program annotator for the Cleveland Orchestra and himself a notable composer.

LINK to Music for Young America (April 2025 remastering)

Music by Herbert Elwell and Ernest Bloch

Now to the bonus disc - a private recording of Elwell's "Blue Symphony," a setting of John Gould Fletcher's poem "The Blue Symphony" from the 1940s, together with Ernest Bloch's Piano Quintet, written in 1923, when the composer was head of the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Herbert Elwell

The worthy performances are by the Feldman String Quartet, with soprano Elizabeth V. Forman and pianist Gloria Whitehurst Phillips. The recording was made for the Roanoke Fine Arts Center in 1962.

LINK to music by Elwell and Bloch (April 2025 remastering)

More Copland and Thomson Film Scores

Four years ago a post on this blog presented an American Decca recording of film music by Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson from the Little Orchestra Society and Thomas Scherman. Here is a companion post with more music by the same composers and the same performers, also from 1952.

This time around we have a 10-inch LP with music from Copland's score for the film Our Town, and a suite from Thomson's music for The Plow That Broke the Plains.

Thomas Scherman

Scherman was not terribly well regarded as a conductor during his lifetime (Ned Rorem tells the story of walking out on a Scherman performance of Rorem's own music), but in my view these are accomplished performances of most affecting music, beautifully recorded.

LINK to February 2026 remastering

Americana for Solo Winds and Strings

This Mercury LP celebrates the conservative but highly attractive music of the composers associated with Howard Hanson at the Eastman School - with the notable addition of Aaron Copland, in what may be the only recording of Copland's music led by Hanson.

The delightful and striking cover seems to pay homage to Copland's "Quiet City," and perhaps Kent Kennan's "Night Soliloquy." An alternative cover used for an EP issue (at the end of the post) switches to a rural motif more in keeping with the conductor's "Pastorale."

Howard Hanson

A few words about the lesser known composers:

Kent Kennan and Homer Keller

Kent Kennan, an Eastman School graduate, spent most of his life teaching, but he was an active composer earlier in his career and near the end of his life. He wrote a few widely used instructional books.

Homer Keller was another product of the Eastman School. He wrote three symphonies and spent much time teaching.

Bernard Rogers and Wayne Barlow

Bernard Rogers was head of Eastman's composition department for several decades.

Wayne Barlow earned undergraduate, master's and doctoral degrees from Eastman, then taught there for many years. "The Winter's Past" is also known as "The Winter's Passed" - either makes sense, as would "The Winters Past," for that matter.

The recordings were made in October 1952 and May 1953. The sound has been remastered in ambient stereo and is very good. The download includes several reviews.

William Warfield in Copland and Dougherty Song Settings

William Warfield was one of the finest bass-baritone talents of the post-war period in the US. Today he is perhaps most closely associated with the role of Joe in Show Boat and of Porgy in Porgy and Bess, and the "Old American Song" settings of Aaron Copland, first issued on this LP.

Following service in the armed forces, Warfield had achieved some success on the lyric stage, first in the touring company of Call Me Mister, singing such numbers as "Going Home Train" and "Face on the Dime". He then was Cal in the original cast of Marc Blitzstein's 1949 opera Regina.

Warfield's pivotal appearance was a well-received 1950 recital in New York's Town Hall. One critic wrote, "He is endowed with a noble voice, warmth of temperament, a feeling for the stage and great sincerity." This success seems to have led, at least indirectly, to being cast in Show Boat and to a recording contract with Columbia. This record, taped in Columbia's 30th Street studios in August 1951, was the first to be issued under that contract.

Warfield and Copland at the recording session

Warfield had introduced the "Old American Songs" earlier in the year. The Copland settings have become justly famous because of Warfield's marvelous interpretations, which are in turn sharp, tender and witty. The composer soon produced a second book of such songs, which he and Warfield recorded in August 1953. These remained unissued until 1999. (I have included the second set in the download.) Copland later orchestrated both books; he and Warfield recorded them for a 1963 Columbia LP, which also included Benny Goodman's second recording of Copland's Clarinet Concerto.

The fame of the "Old American Songs" has overshadowed the other songs on this record, which is a shame because they, too, are very worthwhile. These five Sea Chanties were arranged by Celius Dougherty, a pianist and composer who specialized in song settings.

Celius Dougherty

Dougherty had made a living for many years as an accompanist. (Strangely, he does not accompany Warfield on his songs; Otto Herz does.) When this record appeared, Dougherty was part of a successful two-piano team with Vincenz Ruzicka. As a composer, Dougherty often worked with nautical themes in tribute to his brother Ralph, a sailor who was killed in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. These particular chanties form a most enjoyable set, with clever accompaniments and Warfield again in splendid form.

Digression No. 24

The Proms start tonight in the Royal Albert Hall and even as I write these words the BBC Symphony, Jirí Belohlávek and a cast of not quite a thousand (but lots of singers nonetheless) have launched into Mahler's Eighth. I'm old enough to remember when Mahler was considered an acquired taste. Now it's a taste sensation that you can't escape. There is even a conductor who specializes in a single Mahler symphony.

Well, I don't have any Mahler for you today, but I do have a less grandiose choral work to celebrate the opening of the Proms. It is taken from the Last Night of the Proms in 1953 - September 19. This is Vaughan Williams' gorgeous Serenade to Music, in the choral version as presented by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus led by Basil Cameron, a conductor who made relatively few records.

This work is included with the July BBC Music Magazine, but that transfer manages to be both dull and strident. My version attempts to remove the muddy vesture of this mastering, perhaps with some success. I'm not in the habit of offering things that are already out there, but I do love this work.

LINK

Also wanted to mention a small site that may be of interest to you (thanks to a tip from John Leifert). The Museum of Broadcast Communications has a web site with quite a few interesting music clips from Chicago television. The other day I watched Aaron Copland rehearsing his Billy the Kid with the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia. This 1960 rehearsal was staged for the cameras, to be sure, but is nonetheless fascinating - and the sound is good. Here's a link.

Copland and Thomson Film Scores

This is a follow-up to my earlier post containing Virgil Thomson's music written for the film Louisiana Story, which came out in 1948. There are two suites pulled from this music - the one heard on the earlier post by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the composer's direction, and this one, called Acadian Songs and Dances, which contains music that Thomson derived from published folk collections.

In this performance, the Thomson is coupled with film music written by Aaron Copland, the Children's Suite from The Red Pony, from 1949.

Both suites were relatively new when this recording from the Little Orchestra Society and Thomas Scherman was issued in 1952. With the films' similarities in theme, setting and time, and the connection between the two composers, the two works make highly complementary companions on disc.

The performances from the New York-based ensemble are very fine, and the simple recording is excellent. It is a good example of what used to be called "hole in the wall" recording - that is, the recording is so coherent that it gives the impression of taking place behind the speaker. That's an effect I like, but the "hi-fi" crowd wanted things to be more close up, so the microphones got closer and more numerous and by the end of the decade multi-miked ping-pong stereo was in vogue.

The music here is simple, yet sophisticated in its own way, and the performance is highly sympathetic.

LINK to February 2025 remastering

Copland by Koussevitzky

This post is in response to a request by friend of the blog David Federman. David says he has never heard a version of Copland's Appalachian Spring to rival the first recording, by the Boston Symphony and Serge Koussevitzky. So here is that mid-40s recording for David, and I imagine many others, in a mid-50s transfer on RCA - and a pretty good one, too.

This also includes Koussevitzky's 1938 first recording of El Salón México, also sounding well, if enshrouded in reverb.

This pressing of Appalachian Spring had a fault toward the end of the side, so I patched in a short section from a much later Victrola pressing, which almost certainly used the same tape transfer for its master.

The latter album also included the BSO/Koussevitzky version of A Lincoln Portrait, with narrator Melvyn Douglas, so I have added that to the download as a bonus. Here the sound is a little cloudier and there is more pitch instability, possibly caused by making a new disk master from an old and creaky tape transfer. I am not that fond of Douglas' histrionic approach to Lincoln. Copland's words tell us that Lincoln was "a quiet and a melancholy man," but Douglas seems to disagree. Give me Charlton Heston with Abravanel, a more monumental approach that is well suited to the stylized (and much criticized) narrative and to Copland's music.

UPDATE - This has been remastered and the Appalachian Spring is a new transfer.

Barber and Copland in Improved Sound

Continuing our series of favorite recordings from the first year of this blog in enhanced sound, we have here two first recordings of important American works - Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto and Aaron Copland's Piano Concerto, 1926.

The audible improvements this time out are not dramatic, but worthwhile nonetheless - reduced rumble and a lossless transfer. [Note (September 2023): this has been greatly improved and is now in ambient stereo.]

Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber

Here is what I wrote about this recording when it was first posted:

Here we have two superb works in what I think are their first recordings, and distinctive ones at that.

Louis Kaufman

Louis Kaufman was a stalwart of the film music orchestras and made quite a few records for budget labels. He takes a very personal and romantic view of the gorgeous Barber concerto - much different from the poker-faced approach that's normal in most music these days. He, the indefatigable conductor Walter Goehr, and their pseudonymous orchestra also do a great job with the finale, which usually sounds like an afterthought. The recording is from 1950.

Leo Smit

Aaron Copland makes an appearance to conduct his early Piano Concerto, which is from the Jazz Age and sounds it. It's great fun and very enjoyable in this performance by the talented Leo Smit, a friend of Copland and a superb interpreter of his piano music. The 1951 sound from Rome can be a trifle raucous in the tuttis, but the piano comes across well.

The Musical Masterpiece Society and its sibling labels made many interesting records. We've seen several already on this blog, and more are to come.

First Recording of Copland's Clarinet Concerto

Benny Goodman commissioned Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto in 1948, and although Goodman's stereo recording is well known, this earlier edition, from 1950, is not.

Columbia took Goodman and Copland to its 30th Street studio in New York for the November 1950 session. Benny sounds cautious but does no serious harm to this gorgeous composition.

A few months later, the illustrious New York Quartet went to the same studio to tape a thornier composition, Copland's Piano Quartet, for the Clarinet Concerto's coupling. These days, works in Copland's populist style are generally packaged together. Not so back then.

The New York Quartet had presented the first performance of the Piano Quartet a few months before this recording, which must have been all that Copland could have wished for. The quartet's members were Mieczysław Horszowski, piano, Alexander Schneider, violin, Milton Katims, viola, and Frank Miller, cello.

Perhaps Columbia sensed that they were creating historic recordings, because the sound is better than much of the sludge that came out of its 30th Street site. And these are historic recordings indeed. It's curious that they are not better known.

NEW LINK

First Recordings of Barber and Copland

Here we have two superb works in what I think are their first recordings, and distinctive ones at that.

Louis Kaufman was a stalwart of the film music orchestras and made quite a few records for budget labels. He takes a very personal and romantic view of the gorgeous Barber concerto - much different from the poker-faced approach that's normal in most music these days. He, the indefatigable conductor Walter Goehr, and their pseudonymous orchestra also do a great job with the finale, which usually sounds like an afterthought.

Aaron Copland makes an appearance to conduct his early Piano Concerto, which is from the Jazz Age and sounds it. It's great fun and very enjoyable in this performance by the talented Leo Smit, a friend of Copland and a superb interpreter of his piano music. The sound isn't too bad.

The Musical Masterpiece Society and its sibling labels made many interesting records. We've seen several already on this blog, and more are to come.

Morton Gould by Mitropoulos; Stoki Does Billy

The connecting tissue on this issue is the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York (as the NY Phil was then titled) performing American music. Morton Gould, who made an appearance earlier on the blog as a conductor, shows up again, this time as both composer and conductor.

Gould's terrific Philharmonic Waltzes were written for the NY bunch, and this is a remarkable performance under Dimitri Mitropoulos, either right before or early in his tenure as the Philharmonic music director, which began in 1949. For the first two years, he co-led the operation with Leopold Stokowski. (Now there was a contrast.)

Stoki also appears on this record. The old cowpoke takes two of Copland's Billy the Kid pieces for a ride, then changes gears and genres for the impressionist Griffes item.

It's amazing to hear the mid-century Phil handle the Gould Quickstep march, then the languid White Peacock, both perfectly in style. These recordings are now largely forgotten - they shouldn't be.

One final note - this item has another cover by Alex Steinweiss.

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Copland by Copland

Aaron Copland is better known today for his records as a conductor than as a pianist. On this early effort - dating from 1946-47 - he participates only in "Danzon Cubano." The leading player throughout is Leo Smit, something of a Copland specialist.

The selections from "Our Town" are familiar from the orchestral score. These piano versions are superb. The real find (to me) is the set of "Three Blues." In their simplicity and tone, they are reminiscent of Gershwin's "Three Preludes." Copland's debt to Satie is apparent in these pieces.

This was an early 10-inch LP on the Concert Hall label. I've never seen a reissue of it - strange considering Copland's popularity.

I met Copland once a long time ago at a master class. I remember he was mildly critical of one of the student's compositions. I heard later that the young composer (who later became well known) was devastated.