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THE BASIC REPERTOIRE (174) --Copland's Appalachian Spring. By MARTIN BOOKSPAN COPLAND'S APPALACHIAN SPRING IN her engrossing and entertaining book Dance to the Piper, Agnes de Mille tells the story of how she first conceived the idea for a cowboy ballet in the early 1940's, how she immediately thought of Aaron Copland (and no one else) as the composer of the music for it, and how she was encouraged in her thinking and planning by her friend Martha Graham. Copland quickly agreed to Miss De Mille's plans: the set was to be a nondescript country barn, the male dancers were to move around on stage like rugged men and not "wind blown petals," and the hero was to court his girl without "jumps and turns." The result of the De Mille-Copland collaboration was Rodeo, a milestone in the history of American dance; a new and thoroughly American style of dance came to vivid, triumphant life on that October evening in 1942 when Rodeo was first performed. Very soon there after Miss De Mille began her choreographic assignment for Oklahoma!, and her transformational powers stamped themselves upon the Broadway stage as well. The part Martha Graham played in the planning of Rodeo reawakened thoughts of an artistic collaboration be tween her and Copland. As far back as 1931 she had used the music of Copland's rather austere Piano Variations as background for a dance piece titled Dithyramb. In Copland's own words, "Surely only an artist with a close affinity for my work could have visualized dance material in so rhythmically complex and aesthetically abstruse a composition." The opportunity for Copland and Graham to collaborate on a new work came by way of that extraordinary patron of the arts, Mrs. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. Attending a Graham perform ance for the first time early in 1942, Mrs. Coolidge invited Miss Graham to create three new ballets for the 1943 annual fall festival of the Coolidge Foundation in Washington, D.C. Miss Graham, in turn, commissioned music for the occasion from three different composers: Paul Hindemith (whose score became the underpinning for the Graham ballet Herodiade, a title later changed to The Mirror Before Me); Darius Milhaud (Imagined Wing was the title given to the Graham-Milhaud ballet, listed among his works as Jeux de Printemps); and Aaron Copland. "After considerable delay," wrote Copland, "Miss Graham sent me an un titled script. I suggested certain changes to which she made no serious objections. The premiere performance took place in Washington a year later than originally planned-in October, 1944." The works by Hindemith and Milhaud appeared the same year. Miss Graham called the Copland ballet Appalachian Spring, borrowing the title from a poem by Hart Crane. Dance historian and critic Edwin Denby described the action of Appalachian Spring in the New York Herald Tribune in May 1945 as concerned with "a pioneer celebration in the spring around a newly-built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills in the early part of the last century. The bride-to-be and the young farmer-husband enact the emotions, joyful and apprehensive, their new domestic partnership invites. An older neighbor suggests now and then the rocky confidence of experience. A revivalist and his followers remind the new householders of the strange and terrible aspects of human fate. At the end the couple are left quiet and strong in their new house " Copland's original score was for a chamber ensemble of thirteen instruments: flute, clarinet, bassoon, piano, and strings. In 1945 he arranged a suite from the ballet music for full symphony orchestra, requiring woodwinds, horns, trumpets and trombones in pairs, piano, harp, percussion, and strings. Copland subtitled the score "Ballet for Martha," and in 1945 Appalachian Spring received the Pulitzer Prize for music, as well as the award of the Music Critics' Circle of New York for the outstanding theatrical work of the 1944-1945 season. During the first weekend in October 1945, the suite drawn by the composer from his complete ballet score was included in the opening programs of the season by the conductors of three great orchestras-Serge Koussevitzky in Boston, Artur Rodzinski in New York, and George Szell in Cleveland. THERE are eleven entries in the cur rent Schwann Catalog under the heading Appalachian Spring; four of them are conducted by Leonard Bernstein, three by Copland himself, and two by Eugene Ormandy. All four of the Bern stein listings are of the same performance but coupled differently, and the two Ormandy listings are also of the same performance with different couplings. But the three Copland-conducted recordings are of three different performances. The first of them, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (RCA LSC 2401), was made in April 1958- rather early in Copland's now-flourishing inter national conducting career. The second ( Columbia disc M 30649, cassette MT 30649) was made just a few years ago with the London Symphony Orchestra. Both are of the suite from the ballet in its full-orchestra version. The third Cop land recording ( Columbia disc M 32736, cassette MT 32736) is a very recent account of the complete ballet score in its original chamber-ensemble version, but slightly beefed up: fifteen (rather than thirteen) players are listed on the jacket cover. There is a quality of gentle warmth and intimacy to this performance that immediately places it in the front rank-particularly since the playing and reproduction are outstanding and the packaging includes a bonus seven inch disc containing portions of the rehearsal that preceded the recording. The complete score contains about ten minutes more music than the suite. Of the composer's two recordings of the suite, I find I prefer the earlier one, on RCA, because of its greater spontaneity and pep--and because it is coupled with the only available recording of a suite from Copland's opera, The Tender Land. Bernstein's seems to be the only avail able reel-to-reel performance (Columbia MQ 559, MGR 30071, and MQ 1265, with different couplings). He has long had a special affinity for Copland's mu sic, and his performance of the Appalachian Spring Suite is authoritative and deeply felt, well played and richly re corded. Whether you select one of the Copland-conducted performances or the one by Bernstein is a matter of personal choice. In all of them the music is well served. ---------- Mr. Bookspan's 1973-1974 UPDATING OF THE BASIC REPERTOIRE is now available in convenient pamphlet form. Send $0.25 and self-addressed #10 envelope to Susan Larabee, Stereo Review, 1 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 for your copy. ----------
. ============ Also see: TAPE HORIZONS--More Standards, CRAIG STARK GOING on RECORD, JAMES GOODFRIEND
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