Track Listing

1. Morning on the Ranch
2. Gift
3. Dream March
4. Circus Music
5. Walk to the Bunkhouse
6. Grandfather's Story
7. Happy Ending
8. Our Town
9. Heiress Suite: Prelude/Catherine's Engagement/Cherry Red Dress/Depart
10. New England Countryside
11. Barley Wagons
12. Sunday Traffic
13. Grovers Corners
14. Threshing Machines
15. Prairie Journal [Music for Radio]

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47166 in Music
• Brand: RCA
• Released on: 1994-04-12
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Amazon.com essential recording
This is a great series of recordings. Leonard Slatkin has generally chosen the right balance of music for the composers used in the series (with terrific cover art from Thomas Hart Benton). This disc is devoted to Copland's film music. The treat here is a version of The Heiress Suite reconstructed by Arnold Freed. Copland's talent for writing for films rested in his ability to identify and maintain themes, at the same time not slacking on the transitional details. This belongs in any Copland collection. --Paul Cook

Customer Reviews

Yeah Copland and St. Louis!
Recently rehearsing the Red Pony and Our Town in a mostly undergraduate orchestra, I was struck by how absolutely foreign the music seemed to the players. I made the (rash) assumption that this musical idiom would be so ingrained in American-trained instrumentalist...So tellingly different than my experiences at the age, where I played Copland several times a year. Let's hope my obesrvation is just an anomaly, and that his music lives on. It deserves to!

Well, with recordings like this one, Copland's legacy has a good advocate! This Midwestern orchestra just shines in this kind of music--the strings are sweet, but yet balance that sweetness with a clarity that is jaw-dropping. For example, I don't think Ormandy's incredible Philadelphia players would be as idiomatic in this music as St. Louis. Philly's warm tone, so apt in the music of the late Romantics, would just get in the way of Copland's wonderful orchestration.

What can I add? Slatkin stays out of Copland's music's way, which is all to the good. Don't mess with perfection! The Red Pony is great fun. Our Town is moving. The Heiress Suite is fine, but not my favorite Copland. Music for Films is music that communicates so well what the different movements are supposed to depict...etc. Great sound, too.

Great recording of definitive American film music
In a way, filmgoers have been listening to Copland's film scores nearly every time they go to the cinema, since film composers have been shamelessly ripping off Copland for the last half-century or so. When you listen to the "Our Town" suite, do you get the nagging feeling that you have heard this music somewhere before? No doubt you have, in dozens of derivitave film scores from the 1980's and 1990's, sometimes (shamelessly) right down to the exact chord progressions.

How nice it is then to be able to go back to the source, and have rendered in so superb a fashion as it is by Slatkin & the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Slatkin, as usual, upholds his reputation as one of the leading interpreters of American music.

This CD contains the premier recording of "The Heiress Suite," which is a delight to listen to, and of course the fairly well-known "Red Pony" music. Is their a more quintessential piece of "Western" music than the "Walk to the Bunkhouse?" How does a jewish boy from Brooklyn nail it on the head so perfectly, anyway?

Other selections include "Music for Movies," a collection of bits & pieces from an assortment of Copland-scored movies that Copland arranged in 1943, and "Music for Radio," an earlier composition that isn't really "movie music," but fits well with the rest of the compositions on this CD.

Instead of wasting your time on movie soundtracks that are nothing more than just derivitave hack jobs, listen to music by a composer who had truly mastered his craft.

Aaron Copland: the Norman Rockwell of film scoring
When I purchased this collection I was already very familiar with Mr. Copland's more popular fanfaric motifs. I was astounded at how much I enjoyed the wonderful division of both sweeping dramatic themes and friendly, home-grown melodies. His film scores for the 1939 'Of Mice and Men' and the 1940 'Our Town' are a testament to classic films set in simpler times. The 'Red Pony' tracks for which the compilation is named are a magical digression from the listener's pre-conceived notions of Copland western fare. When one expects "Rodeo" (arguably one of Copland's most famous themes) one instead receives a gentler and sometimes powerfully moving score. The crowning jewel of this collection, however; is the beautiful suite from his Academy Award winning score for William Wyler's 1949 film of 'The Heiress.' When listening to this magnificent piece of musical history I am reminded how so many great scores are unavailable to listeners of today, and only through recreation and re-recordings can we re-capture those glimpses of film score artistry. I can only hope that many lost or hard to find works continue to be found or recorded so that film score and music lovers in general can continue to discover and rediscover the joy and beauty of our masters in film composing.