Aaron Strumann

Copland was drawn to the film, Something Wild, an unusual psychological drama about the feelings of a young girl learning to live with violence and with the moods of the city. The scenario required long stretches of uninterrupted music which Copland later shaped into a symphonic suite to satisfy a commission from the London Symphony Orchestra. The four movements are titled: Skyline, Night Thoughts, Subway Jam, and Toward the Bridge.

Copland was interested in exploring various methods of composition that might stimulate his melodic and harmonic ideas. It had been twenty years since he had adapted serialism to his own use. He said that "composing with all twelve notes of the chromatic scale can give one a feeling of freedom. It's like looking at a picture from a different point of view." Copland was the first to admit that he did not keep strictly to the rules of serialism. In fact, the sense of a tonal center is rarely missing in the Quartet.

Following the less than enthusiastic reception of his only full length opera, Copland arranged an orchestral suite from the score. It includes the love duet, the lively square dance, and the stirring and beautiful The Promise of Living drawn from the quintet at the end of the opera's first act. The composer was gratified when the Suite garnered the good reviews he had hoped the opera would inspire. In 1996, Murry Sidlin created a new suite for soprano, tenor and chamber ensemble based on his successful reduced orchestration of the opera, which uses the same scoring as the 13 instrument version of Appalachian Spring.

If you want a good sampling of Copland's orchestral works, then this 2-CD compilation comes highly recommended, with excellent performances of works such as Appalachian Spring, Quiet City, El Salón México and others. (Presto Classical)