Copland: The Modernist

The material covered on Copland the Modernist offers an important--and highly enjoyable--counterweight to the icon of folksy Americana that the composer is usually made out to be. And though such works as Appalachian Spring and Rodeo have kept Copland high on the list of the 20th century's most popular composers, his achievement extends well beyond the familiar beauty of those musical landscapes. Michael Tilson Thomas, who has evolved into arguably the finest American conductor of his generation, has a special affinity for American maverick composers, and the selections here represent Copland as a probing artist who made his own impression straddling the popular-classical divide. In fact, Copland's later experiments in serialism were simply a natural development of his restless curiosity, of which these early assimilations of jazz into a symphonic idiom are excellent examples. Tilson Thomas manages at the same time to convey the heady inspiration from European models and the sense of embarking on a brave new world that went into the Short Symphony and Symphonic Ode (composed for the Boston Symphony). This is spectacular, spiky, incisive playing by a great American orchestra of a great American composer. --Thomas May