There are about a dozen collections like this available on CD, and most of them are even similarly titled. But this one truly lives up to its name, not only because of its range -- reaching out not only to the most familiar of
Copland's popular compositions, but also to his lesser known (but equally worthy) concert pieces, such as Quiet City -- but also for going into oft-neglected corners of the Sony Classical library, as well as into the newly linked BMG Classical (formerly RCA Victor) library. Even the moments that might well be weak, involving the composer's own recordings of his work --
Copland was never noted as a terribly skilled conductor, and lacked an assistant/associate of the caliber of
Robert Craft (who performed that function for
Igor Stravinsky on the latter's post-1950 recordings of his own work) -- have been carefully selected for their quality. And the result is not only
Copland's greatest hits, but also, arguably, within the context of a two-label anthology, the best of
Aaron Copland.
Michael Tilson Thomas' Fanfare for the Common Man starts things off, and then we move on to one of the finest of
Copland's own recordings, El Salon Mexico with the
New Philharmonia. Then it's on to some popular excerpts, Simple Gifts from Appalachian Spring (
John Williams/
Boston Pops), Hoe-Down from Rodeo (
Leonard Bernstein/
New York Philharmonic),
Copland's own Billy the Kid excerpts with the
London Philharmonic, and The Promise of Living from the composer's oft-forgotten late-'50s
Boston Symphony Orchestra recording of the suite from The Tender Land.
Williams and the
Boston Pops make a return appearance for Quiet City, for strings, trumpet, and English horn, with solos by
Tim Morrison and
Laurence Thorstenberg;
Leonard Slatkin and the
Saint Louis Symphony are represented on Grovers Corners from Our Town; and pianist
Leo Smit takes us Down a Country Lane, an early
Copland piece intended for solo keyboard or school orchestra. The main body of the collection finishes with
Carl Sandburg's reading of the Lincoln Portrait, accompanied by the
New York Philharmonic under
André Kostelanetz (who commissioned the piece). One of the jewels of the Columbia Masterworks library, this recording was neglected for decades in favor of those with better known speakers such as
Henry Fonda and
Gregory Peck; in fact,
Sandburg's recording is one of the three best ever heard (the others being by
William Warfield, a Grammy-winning recording that has never reappeared on CD, and
Katharine Hepburn), and given
Sandburg's scholarly and professional connections to Lincoln, carries cultural resonances far beyond those of his voice. Recorded in 1958 and originally paired on LP with similar American-themed works by
Howard Hanson and
Samuel Barber, this recording was previously relegated to a comparatively obscure, more scholarly oriented double-CD anthology, and to a 2006 compilation called The Aaron Copland Collection; perhaps between that CD and this, it can now get properly rediscovered. As "bonus tracks" (how does one append "bonus tracks" to a collection that never previously existed and, thus, never had a basic form?), the producers have included Hoe-Down as done, in a decidedly playful manner, by percussionist
Evelyn Glennie and the
National Philharmonic Orchestra under
Barry Wordsworth, and the same piece as performed with electric amplification by
Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. And they both fit perfectly into the collection. The sound quality is also excellent, the makers obviously having used the latest remasterings on all of the vintaqe material, and achieved a good balance in material ranging across more than three decades of recording. The flow of material is sublimely exquisite, as on the gossammer-textured transitions from Quiet City to the opening section of Our Town, through the equally subtle shift to Down a Country Lane's solo piano, and into A Lincoln Portrait, then onto the more modern appended interpretations of Hoe-Down. And there's even some spare though decent annotation, not always a given on budget-priced collections.