Aaron Copland - Billy the Kid; Rodeo; etc. (Andrew Litton)

Information

Composer: Aaron Copland

• An Outdoor Overture
• Billy the Kid, ballet in one act
• El Salón México
• Rodeo, ballet in one act

Colorado Symphony Orchestra

Andrew Litton, conductor

Date: 2015

Label: BIS

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Review

This is “meat and potatoes” repertoire for a conductor like Andrew Litton, and he doesn’t disappoint. He has the Colorado Symphony playing at the top of its form. The Outdoor Overture has both swagger and brilliance, and it never sounds as though it was composed for a youth orchestra (which it actually was). Of course Copland deserves some of the credit for that too, but this doesn’t diminish the care and affection that Litton lavishes on the music.

Next up: Billy the Kid in its very welcome complete version, another virtuoso performance recorded with powerful impact. The gunfight is tremendous, and the whole piece builds inexorably to its concluding apotheosis. El Salón México is much harder to play than it sounds–it’s basically written in a quick 8/8 that Copland groups within the bar as suits his fancy. Orchestras underestimate its difficulties at their peril. This performance makes the piece sound easy–perhaps too easy, as in the rather self-indulgent handling of the big string tune before the main allegro kicks in. Still, once the music gets hopping it moves along smashingly.

Rodeo, also in its complete version, features very frisky versions of Buckaroo Holiday and the concluding Hoe-Down. It doesn’t, to be frank, sound all that danceable and I can’t help but think that the piece would benefit from a bit more edge and weight of sonority at a more deliberate speed, but God knows that the orchestra pegs the rhythms and hits those off-beat accents. Ultimately it’s a matter of taste, and certainly these polished performances, so well engineered, offer little cause for complaint. I would very much like to hear these forces take on the symphonies (Litton already recorded the Organ Symphony in Dallas for Delos, you may recall, and quite well too). Recommended.

— David Hurwitz

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Aaron Copland (14 November 1900 – 2 December 1990) was an American composer. Born in New York City, he studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger before returning to the United States, where he absorbed influences ranging from jazz and neoclassicism to folk traditions. Seeking a broader audience, Copland simplified his musical language in the 1930s and achieved international fame with works such as Billy the Kid, Rodeo and Appalachian Spring. He also composed film scores, orchestral and choral works, and later experimented with serialism. Beyond composing, Copland was an influential teacher, writer and conductor.

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Andrew Litton (born May 16, 1959) is an American orchestral conductor. He studied piano with Nadia Reisenberg and conducting with Sixten Ehrling at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. He also received lessons from Walter Weller at the Salzburg Mozarteum and Edoardo Müller in Milan. Litton served as Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (1988-94), the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (1994-2006), the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra (2003-15), and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra (2013-16). He has been Music Director of New York City Ballet since 2015.

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