Album

Back in the glory days of the early digital revolution when it sometimes seemed like everybody had a recording contract and everything was being recorded, American conductor Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra were hired by RCA to record the great works of the twentieth century American symphonic canon. The idea was a natural, and the results were consistently impressive for the quality of their musicianship and the depth of commitment to the material. One of the most impressive of those discs, Copland: Music for Films, is reissued here by Musical Heritage Society in nearly identical packaging and absolutely identical sound. Selecting less familiar Copland repertoire—some may know The Red Pony and Our Town, but how about The Heiress Suite and Prairie Journal?—Slatkin interprets these works with strength and soul. The music is sometimes directly pictorial: "Circus Music" and "Threshing Machines" sound like circus music and threshing machines, but it is more often deeply evocative, and in Our Town and "New England Countryside," it is as full of the heart of Copland's vision of America as his Appalachian Spring and Third Symphony. Recorded in lush but detailed digital sound for RCA by Jay David Saks, this Musical Heritage re-release deserves to be heard by anyone who enjoys Copland's music.

© James Leonard, Rovi

CD 1
Aaron Copland Composer Red Pony, suite for orchestra Work Recorded 1992 22:43 Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin Conductor
1	1.Morning on the Ranch	4:30			$0.99
2	2.The Gift	4:46			$0.99
3	3.Dream March and Circus Music	2:25			$0.99
4	3.Dream March and Circus Music	1:43			$0.99
5	4.Walk to the Bunkhouse	2:37			$0.99
6	5.Grandfather's Story	3:41			$0.99
7	6.Happy Ending	3:01			$0.99
Aaron Copland Composer Our Town Work Recorded 1991 Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin Conductor
8	Our Town	9:05			$0.99
Aaron Copland Composer The Heiress Work Recorded 1992 Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin Conductor
9	Suite	8:06			$0.99
Aaron Copland Composer Music for Movies Work Recorded 1991 15:13 Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin Conductor
10	1.New England Countryside (from The City)	5:11			$0.99
11	2.Barley Wagons (from Of Mice and Men)	2:13			$0.99
12	3.Sunday Traffic (from The City)	2:28			$0.99
13	4.The Story of Grover's Corners (from Our Town)	2:20			$0.99
14	5.Threshing Machines (from Of Mice and Men)	3:01			$0.99
Aaron Copland Composer Music for Radio: Saga of the Prairies Work Recorded 1991 Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin Conductor
15	Music for Radio: Saga of the Prairies	11:46			$1.98