The Great American Symphony, And More
Erik North | San Gabriel, CA USA | 02/04/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"It was the Boston Symphony's music director Serge Koussevitsky who commissioned Aaron Copland to write a symphony that would reflect the best of America in the post-World War II world, and the composer complied with what Koussevitsky called "the great American symphony", the Symphony No. 3. And in the catalogue, there have been two great recordings of this piece, which concludes with an appropriation of the composer's beloved "Fanfare For The Common Man." One is Leonard Bernstein's 1985 Deutsche Grammophon recording with his New York Philharmonic. The other is this 1989 recording made by the St. Louis Symphony and its Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin.
As much of an exponent of Copland and American music as Bernstein was, Slatkin gets the most out of this symphony, from its quiet opening to its trumphal finish, and the St. Louis Symphony responds with a great fervor--a hallmark of Slatkin's hugely successful tenure there as music director from 1979 to 1995. The companion piece to the symphony, "Music For A Great City", derived from the composer's score to the 1961 movie SOMETHING WILD, is nothing to sneeze at either, not when it is redolent of the sounds of the Big Apple, and not when an orchestra/conductor combine such as St. Louis and Slatkin do it right. This is one of the greatest recordings of American music made in recent decades, and is strongly recommended for anyone who loves what our nation's musical heritage is all about."