Search - Aaron Copland, Andrew Litton, Dallas Symphony Orchestra :: A Copland Profile

Good-enough performances from Litton in great sound

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 01/17/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"All of the recordings made by Delos with the Dallas Sym. have had demonstration-quality sound, the major drawback being that their conductor, Andrew Litton, is no great shakes. Copland's Red Pony Suite is simple, infectious music, and here it gets an unbeatable account as far as sonics go, but Litton won't gallop hard enough and underlines delicacy at the expense of impact. Even so, he is miles more musical than Slatkin in this music.



In the jazzy-modernist Music for the Theater, Litton is up against Leonard Bernstein, compared to whom he sounds cautious, but the gorgeous sonics make up for a lot. We hear every bit of inner detail and riffed counterpoint. The final work is one of the young Copland's bids for serious modernism, his 1924 Organ Sym. Influenced heavily by his Parisian studies with Nadia Boulanger, the work sounds no more modern than Poulenc or Durufle, but one early critic complained that the finale "screamed like a banshee that had somehow found itself at the wailing wall." The refernce was to a loud outburst by the organ, which is splendidly caught by the Delos engineers. Litton conducts lyrically throughout but sitll could use a bit more energy.



In all, the performances are good enough that it's worth having this Copland colleciton for its spectacular sound."