Preparing for the Radio Breakfast show this weekend, I’ve locked myself in my office, resisting the blandishments of Christmas shopping and the lure of a rapidly emptying London.
It’s increasingly hard to concentrate for me. Once I’ve listened to all the music and read all the notes and delved in the internet, I keep on getting distracted. Some of the music I like much more than others, so I find it hard to come back and write something germane while I’m down a wonderful wormhole in the internet.
I’m listening to a fantastic interview with Aaron Copland from 1980. He was 80 then but has the most wonderful voice. Crisp, laughing, open.
He was a striking figure in American culture. Gay, left-wing, Jewish at a time when none of those things were particularly acceptable. But he never seemed to suffer on account of any of those things.
Just listen to his voice. You can understand everything wonderful about him.
It’s always delightful to hear that story about ‘Appalachian Spring’ . Everyone thinks of it as a portrait of that geographical area - but Copland didn’t know what Martha Graham was going to call it when he wrote it.
Alex Ross tells it best in the monumental The Rest is Noise.
And now he’s telling a story about accidentally playing through a composition of his in front of Prokoviev.
“Very lively. A bad boy type. Not kind. And he was right about my piece: ‘Too many bassi ostinati!”
“I can’t imagine what it was like being a composer before recordings. To have your reputation based on one performance of a piece - then very rarely repeated. There were 4 hand piano reductions but no full orchestral version. I’m very glad to hear my works in full panoply of sound.”
