This program of three large piano works by
Aaron Copland would seem a natural -- it contains one piece each from his early period as a young and often surprisingly daring firebrand, from his middle populist period, and from his later years when serialist orthodoxy was enforced. But none of these works is exactly mainstream, and the trio is a rare item indeed. On one hand that demonstrates how it was
Copland's knack for distilling
Ravel's orchestration down to a group of highly accessible devices that made him a superstar. But on the other, it's fascinating to hear how the absence of an orchestra affected
Copland's thinking. Two general characteristics emerge. The first is that these three works resemble each other more than would three orchestral works from about the same respective times. The central Piano Sonata, composed between 1939 and 1941, is indeed more tonal than the other two pieces, but not by much.
Copland's populist style depended on his use of codes -- evoking the empty spaces of the American West, for example -- that had to do with orchestral textures and didn't suggest themselves as readily on a piano. His textures, shorn of instrumentation, are distilled down to their structural essences in all three works and he favors a monumental sound with wide spacings, but these come off very differently on a piano. The Piano Sonata features such airy textures in its moderate-tempo outer movements; the center unexpectedly harks back to the composer's early experimentation with jazz. The Piano Fantasy (1955-1957) represents
Copland's personal take on twelve-tone music (he used only a 10-note row, for one thing), and his gift for catchy motives is in evidence despite the creatively restrictive environment. Pianist
Robert Weirich deserves credit for putting these pieces together and also for his sympathetic insights into the thorny Piano Variations of 1930, which show that however French
Copland's training might have been, he was listening to the winds from the east as well. A fine choice for
Copland fans.