Delos Diary

Classical music stations play a lot of Aaron Copland. Usually it's "Rodeo," "Billy the Kid" or "Appalachian Spring." Copland is one near-contemporary American composer who goes down easily with almost all listeners. The pieces mentioned, when well performed, never seem to lose their appeal.

While immobilized in a freeway traffic jam the other day, I found the delay made more tolerable by listening to a slightly different bit of Copland on the car radio. His "Red Pony Film Suite for Orchestra" has all the appeal of the other more famous ballet scores plus a happy, jaunty oh-so-American flavor of its own. "What a lively performance," I thought, "and so well recorded." At the conclusion, the announcer identified the recording as taken from the Delos CD "A Copland Profile" (DE 3221). How soon we forget! A fresh look at or listen to this album, recorded about six years ago, reveals how vital and alive the early music of Aaron Copland remains, and how well the Dallas Symphony, conducted by Andrew Litton, play it. Now the next task will be to rent a videocassette of the film for which Copland wrote this beguiling music. Too bad I won't be able to watch it in the car.