Copland: El Salon Mexico / Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra / Music for the Theatre / Connotations for Orchestra ~ Bernstein

There has never been a better interpreter of Copland's music than Leonard Bernstein. Lenny's affection for--and understanding of--Copland and his music was matched by a unique physical ability to get the feeling of the music across as a conductor; in essence, he became the music when he conducted it, something Copland himself wasn't capable of. As a consequence, Bernstein's accounts of Copland's music speak with a convincing accent and special authority. That's certainly the case with these performances, which date from the last year of Bernstein's life and find him reunited with his old band, the New York Philharmonic. The bookends are the Music for the Theatre, from 1925, and Connotations for Orchestra, commissioned by Bernstein and the Philharmonic for the opening of their new home at Lincoln Center in 1962. Both are impressively done, as is El Salón México, one of the most rousing and colorful of Copland's orchestral essays. A different Copland emerges in the Clarinet Concerto, which was composed for Benny Goodman in 1947 and fashioned with a lapidary touch. The Philharmonic's principal clarinet, Stanley Drucker, steps easily into the solo role, playing with great sensitivity in the pensive opening movement--which, with Lenny on the podium, sounds very slow and full of tenderness, though perhaps a bit too poignant--and showing plenty of agility in the concerto's finale, where Latin and jazz elements come into play along with the high notes that were one of Goodman's specialties. --Ted Libbey