Copland: Piano Sonata; Piano Fantasy [CD]

Aaron Copland (1900 -- 1990) is best known for his populist works, such as Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, Billy the Kid, and Old American Songs, that incorporate American folk idiom into a classical style. As inspiring as these works are, they do not represent all of Copland. Aaron Copland was a learned, modernist composer who had studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger in the early 1920's. In addition to his popular, accessible compositions, he wrote experimental, austure works showing his mastery of serialism and other components of 20th century style.

Among Copland's modernist works are the three piano compositions on this CD written at widely-spaced times in his career. These three works are deeply personal and tightly written. They make frequent use of serial technique, which Copland combines with tonal sections, and shifting rhythms (the bar indications change every few measures). The works make use of deep, open harmonies particularly in the lower register of the piano, and every note tells. These austure works give the feeling of solitude, of meditiation, of spacial distance and of personal expansiveness. They are essential works of American piano music.

The performer, pianist Benjamin Pasternak, is on the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory of Music and he plays this intense music with feeling and understanding. My fellow reviewers below prefer other readings for some of this music. Be that as it may, this CD presents Copland's major works for solo piano on one CD, well-performed, and at a low price. It is an ideal way for the newcomer to Twentieth Century American music to get to know three seminal works.

The earliest of the three works is the short (11 minute) Piano Variations composed in 1930 when Copland was 30. This work consists of an eleven-measure theme followed by 20 variations based upon four notes -- E -- C -- D# -- C# -- sounded loudly and slowly at the beginning of the work. Tempos and rhythms shift throughout as the four-note theme is repeated in different patterns and guises. The work is tightly written as the variations flow seamlessly from one to another. Copland stated most of his work on this piece consisted in ordering and organizing the variations in a coherent pattern as opposed to composing the variations themselves. The theme and variations conclude about nine minutes into the work. They are followed by a lengthy majestic coda which closes with loud held chords.

Copland's three-movement piano sonata dates from 1941, more that ten years subsequent to the piano variations. This three movement work has the austure, highly reflective character of the earlier piano work, but its range is broader and it is more lyrical. By the time of the piano sonata, Copland had already composed some of his more popular scores, including Billy the Kid, and El Salon Mexico. The first movement opens with a slow, chordal, solemn theme followed by a more lyrical second theme. These themes form the basis of an extensive movement which includes contrasts between swirling figures and runs in the upper register of the piano and heavy, slow chords and notes in the bass. The second movement is a scherzo based upon an opening fluttering figure and has a jazzy feel. The finale, andante sostenuto, is slow and serious. It has a feeling of interiority, wide spaces, and of a composer who knew what it meant to be alone. The opening material of the first movement returns to conclude the work in a close of great peace and acceptance.

The piano fantasy dates from 1955 -- 1957, over a decade after the sonata, and was composed after Copland had composed most of his folk-idiom tinged music, including his opera, "The Tender Land" (1954). It is a lengthy work, about 30 minutes, consisting of a single movement; and it returns to the introspection of the variations and the sonata. The fantasy is a largely serial work based upon a ten-note pattern stated at the outset in slow, deep tones. The work succeeds both in having an improvisatory character and in conveying a sense of tightness, close organization, and discipline. The fantasy is a seamless work which moves through three closely interrelated sections. In the opening part, the tenor slowly shifts from the long, slow opening, through a more lyrical section, through a rapid driving third section. This is followed by a scherzo leading to some highly passionate writing, and a quiet, introspective long concluding section which brings back some of the opening material. Copland makes full use of the sonorities of the piano in long, single tones interspersed with brilliant runs and arpeggios. This is a difficult work which rewards the demands it places upon the listener and performer.

This CD will introduce the listener to a side of Aaron Copland that may be unfamiliar and to three of the great works of the piano literature of the Twentieth Century.

Robin Friedman

Aaron Copland composed at the piano. It was his instrument and he was a competent pianist. Most of the works for which he is best known -- the ballets, the 'Fanfare for the Common Man,' and the rest of it -- were composed initially at the piano and only later orchestrated. These three works -- interestingly presented here in reverse order to that in which they were composed -- are his most important solo piano works. As far as I know they have not appeared on the same CD before. There are, of course, well-known recordings of each of them, most importantly by William Masselos and Leo Smit, but those are getting a bit long in the tooth. So, it is nice to have them gathered here in what are acceptable performances by Benjamin Pasternack, student of Mieczeslaw Horszowski and Rudolf Serkin, former pianist with the Boston Symphony and for some time now a professor of piano at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. I have learned that exactly the same program played by Robert Weirich will be released later this year on the Albany label. Having heard Weirich play the 'Piano Fantasy' in concert, I am eager to hear that release.

As I say, these are competent performances. Certainly nothing is lost in these traversals. One can quibble with Pasternack's choices in certain instances -- for instance, he plays the 'Piano Fantasy' noticeably faster than Masselos, who gave the work its première; the metronome marking for the declamatory opening of the 'Piano Fantasy' is quarter note = 48 and Pasternack takes it at something more like quarter note = 60. Not a huge difference, but enough to feel it. And it gives the opening a different character than one has come to expect. Just a word further about the 'Piano Fantasy': although it is essentially a twelve-tone composition it is not only discernibly by Copland, with his typical jazzy rhythms and accentual displacements, along with other Coplandesque gestures, it is entirely listener-friendly. I can almost guarantee that anyone familiar with and fond of the 'Piano Variations' will have no problem whatever with the 'Fantasy.' [The material in the 'Piano Fantasy' is taken from the early sketches for a piano concerto Copland was writing for William Kapell but which had to be scrapped when Kapell died in a plane crash. The work is dedicated to his memory.]

I find little to quibble with about Pasternack's performance of the 'Piano Sonata.' Possibly that's because I am less familiar with it than the other two pieces, and I do not own a score. Still, it has never, to me, seemed to be at quite as high a level of inspiration as the two pieces that bracket it. It is in three movements, a typical slow-fast-slow form, and for me the most attractive is the jazz-inflected middle movement, Vivace, which has a subtle and inward slower middle section.

The 'Piano Variations' are much better-known than the other two pieces, and have been recorded many times. The story is often told how Leonard Bernstein at his first meeting with Copland impressed the composer by sitting down and playing the 'Variations' from memory. The 'Variations' are often called 'thorny' or 'difficult', although they have never struck me that way. And certainly Pasternack's way with them is rather more lyrical than one generally hears. This has both advantages and disadvantages. It makes it sound less like the ground-breaking work that it is (both for Copland and for American piano music of the 1930s) but it makes it a little more accessible to those listeners who might be a bit allergic to the granitic declamatory style Copland used in this work.

At the budget Naxos price, I would recommend this issue. I will still be waiting to hear Robert Weirich's CD of these three pieces, though, and am hoping that his performances will have just a bit more élan, edge and depth than Pasternack's.

Scott Morrison

Pasternak's performances of the Piano Sonata and the Piano Variations are quite good, but he completely misses the mark with the Piano Fantasy. He plays all three pieces in the same style. But the Fantasy is different from the others. About 30 years ago, I attended a recital by the late William Masselos at Bryn Mawr College. The main work of the program was the Piano Fantasy, which he had premiered for Copland back the in the 1950s. The performance was absolutely mind-bending! Luckily, Masselos original LP recording was still available on the old Columbia Odyssey label, so I ran out to buy it. Masselos performance is presumably a definitive interpretation, because of his interactions with the composer himself. What is unique about this performance is that the Fantasy doesn't come across as a harsh, percussive, composition, but rather as the first example of what one might call "new age space music." The piece is PSYCHEDELIC, not a Bartok retread as it is in Pasternak's recording. This is exemplified by the timings -- Masselos' recording was several minutes longer than Pasternak's. So I hope the Sony remasters and reissues Masselos' recording. Until then, listen to Pasternak for the Sonata and for the Variations only.