Word: copland
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Like him or not, Newman the lyricist is a refreshing irritant. And Newman the composer is a sweet seducer. His music is a lush amalgam of Americana (Stephen Foster and Scott Joplin, George Gershwin and Aaron Copland, classic blues and '70s California pop); it gives symphonic heft to his cagey misanthropy, makes the tunes endlessly listen-to-able. The jauntiest tune in the new set, a sashaying march for Great Nations of Europe, accompanies a brilliantly bleak history of New World colonization, slaughter and disease ("Columbus sailed for India/ Found Salvador instead/He shook hands with some Indians and soon they...
...STEPHEN HOUGH New York Variations (Hyperion) England's most imaginative pianist pays tribute to America's finest solo piano music, including Aaron Copland's Piano Variations, composed 68 years ago but still as up to date as a news flash, and the debut recording of George Tsontakis' Ghost Variations, a forceful, boldly conceived virtuoso showpiece headed for a concert hall near...
...Douglas Allanbrook '48 played the piano reduction of his Ethan Frome for Aaron Copland, who tentatively promised to give the opera a New York premiere after requesting a second play-through. Soon after, however, Copeland finished his own Tender Land, which he produced instead. "Immensely proud" and wanting "the Met or nothing," Allanbrook shelved the score and moved onto other projects, not wanting to waste time selling the piece when he could be writing others. So, for nearly 50 years following its composition, the opera lay unproduced and unpremiered while Allanbrook wrote other pieces and carried on his busy life...
Having proven his musical abilities in these first two very different, all-encompassing works, Shaham was ready after the intermission to really let loose his virtuostic pyrotechnics and have a great time doing it. Aaron Copland's Ukelele Serenade, was the first clue that the remainder of the concert was going to be a wild ride. Heavily jazz- and blues-influenced, the piece gets off to a rollicking start with slip-sliding chromatic passages in both violin and piano parts, which Shaham and Eguchi both tackled with characteristic aplomb and finesse. This explosive opening segues into the actual "serenade," which...
...concertos by Beethoven, Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff, solos by Chopin, Debussy and Liszt, duet performances with Jascha Heifetz and William Primrose--have been reissued as a nine-disk boxed set, allowing a new generation to be dazzled by his recreative genius. Best of all is a live broadcast of the Copland piano sonata that seethes with passion and force. Hear it and marvel at what might have been...