A Great American Symphony

A BBC Music mag cover disk that they decided to title American Landmarks, though I'm not sure why since the pieces vary from the well known to the virtually unknown. In the well known to the extent of being criminally over exposed category comes Copland's Appalachian Spring, played here by the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Thierry Fischer in a live concert recording. I've already posted about the Bernstein version of this that I have and I also have an alternative recording of the other Copland work featured, the Clarinet Concerto. The performance here by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Eric Stern with soloist Robert Plane is very competitive with the Sharon Kam version I have. I don't have alternatives of the other two works on the disk, Ives's Central Park In The Dark and Symphony No 3 by Roy Harris. The Central Park of 1906 that Ives would have hoped to evoke was presumably a different kind of place to that which we now think of but it is an atmospheric piece, beginning spookily and then building to typical clashing Ivesian themes battling against each other. Harris is one of those composers whose stock was very high during his lifetime but who has disappeared off the radar since his death, at least outside the US. So much so that he is a barely recognisable name to me coming to classical music from the standpoint that I've outlined in these posts. The third symphony is written as one continuous piece and made a very favourable impact, utilising as it does pre-classical European forms but managing to infuse them with that "Big Country" outdoors feel mainly associated with Copland and Hollywood. It is played on this disk by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lawrence Foster.