Copland Chamber Works
A fine collection of chamber works from the composer’s own home
March, 2006
Copland Chamber Works
Pianist Michael Boriskin is the director of Copland House (www.coplandhouse.org), which was the composer’s home in Cortlandt Manor, New York, and is now a cultural centre. Its resident ensemble appears on CD for the first time with works recorded at various times and places in the past four years. This is not Copland’s complete chamber output; the Two Ballads for Violin and Piano and the Elegies for Violin and Viola have recently appeared on Bridge (9/04) but it is still a splendid collection.
The earliest piece here is the 1923 Movement for quartet, from his Boulanger tutelage in Paris: it ends with pre-echoes of the first movement of the Organ Symphony. The Prelude for piano trio is an arrangement of the first movement of that work – and very effective, too, in this first recording. Of the two pieces for violin and piano from Copland’s 1920s jazz phase, the Nocturne is bluesy and the Ukelele Serenade – borrowed later in Hear Ye! Hear Ye! – is a gutsy, snappy number.
The modernist Copland emerges with two masterpieces, both in excellent performances: the Vitebsk Trio (1928), based on a Jewish theme coloured by wailing quarter-tones, and the Sextet. This was originally the Short Symphony (1933) but it was found so difficult at the time that Copland made a chamber version four years later. Boriskin writes of this work ‘striking fear into otherwise intrepid musicians’ because of its rapid changes of metre – you can’t tell here.
By the time of the Violin and Piano Sonata (1943) Copland’s style was simpler and he followed that economical duo with Appalachian Spring. By 1950 there was a change again when the Piano Quartet drew on serial technique. But it’s all recognisably Copland, as are the two Threnodies for flute and string trio. This release contains the finest versions available of most of these works. Durations are not provided but the recorded sound is bright and clean.
- Movement
- Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello
- (2) Pieces
- Vocalise
- (2) Pieces
- Vitebsk, ‘Study on a Jewish Theme’
- Sextet
- Sonata for Violin and Piano
- Quartet for Piano and Strings
- Duo
- Threnody I (Igor Stravinsky, in memoriam)
- Threnody II (Beatrice Cunningham, in memoriam)