A treasury of music and history
Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 07/05/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Miscellanies of 'greatest hits' have been with us a long time, but here Sony digs deep into its vaults for a few complete works that are treasurable. Chief among them is A Lincoln Portrait narrated by the poet Carl Sandburg. The musical aspects by Andre Kostelanetz and the NY Phil. are fine, but I got chills listening to the very old, quavery Sandburg because he was born in 1878, only 13 years after Lincoln's assassination. The author of a famous biography of Lincoln, Sandburg seems to link us far back in time.
We also get the composer himself condcuting El Salon Mexico and bits and pieces from Appalachian Spring and The Tender Land, Quiet City from John Williams and the Bston Pops, the deaf perxussionist Evelyn Glennie in a saucy xylophone arrangement of the Hoedown form Rodeo, and more. Leonard Bernstein appears only for a snippet from Rodeo--the Hoedown again--but his famous Copland recordings have been reissued constantly. Finally, the CD ends with a rock-band arrangement of the Hoedown, as a reminder that Copland was the most significant populist among major composers."