A Disappointing Aaron Copland Anthology

Cover of the box set being discussed (courtesy of Jensen Artists)

This coming Friday Sony Classical will release its latest anthology of recordings that now reside in its archives. The full title of the new release is Copland Conducts Copland – The Complete Columbia Album Collection. That second portion is critical, because Aaron Copland conducted performances for at least one other record label (Everest) during his lifetime. The collection consists of twenty CDs; and, to be fair about that title, it includes chamber music and art song with Copland playing piano, rather than conducting. This may not be a comprehensive account of the Copland catalog; but it is definitely a generous one, even when there are multiple performances of some of the selections. As is usually the case, Amazon.com has created a Web page for taking pre-orders.

In his day, Copland was a leading champion of twentieth-century modernism. One might almost go as far as to say that he gave the music of his time its own distinctive American voice. Unfortunately, it is no longer the twentieth century; and changing times have not been particularly kind to this composer.

When I was in secondary school, I could not get enough of Copland’s music. I had the Everest album of him conducting his third symphony, and I avidly followed every note in the score. When I launched a new program about twentieth-century music on the campus radio station at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Copland was there on my very first broadcast. However, by the time I took the Twentieth-Century Music course in my Junior year, the bright lights of Copland’s reputation were beginning to dim. I remember seeing him as an old man when he visited Harvard University, and it was clear that he himself knew that his light was fading. Many years later, when I finally gave away all of my LPs due to a lack of space, there were no Copland albums in my CD collection.

Nevertheless, he does show up from time to time on this site, and I felt he was significant enough to deserve his own label. During the COVID pandemic, when experiences in the concert hall had to give way to experiences in cyberspace, I turned to YouTube to write about the “original cast” film of Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring” with the Copland score that required only thirteen players. Copland made a recording of that version for Columbia in 1973, and it is the one CD in the collection that I value with all my heart. Copland later provided a full-orchestra version of that score, and Michael Tilson Thomas presented it on two different occasions with the San Francisco Symphony during his tenure as Music Director.

Since that time, my encounters with Copland have been sporadic. My greatest satisfaction seems to come from his art songs, and I was glad to encounter two different recordings of his Emily Dickinson settings in the Columbia anthology. As far as the rest of this collection, I fear that I would prefer that the past remain in the past!