It is characteristically enterprising of Etcetera to rescue these Freneh Radio recordings, taken live in 1971, and thus fill gaps in the representation of Coplarid on record. From the archival point of view these performances are unique, even if their quality is variable.
The Symphony No. 1 is the composer's arrangement of the Symphony for organ and orchestra, which he wrote for Nadia Boulanger to play. When she did (with the New York Symphony Orchestra in 1925) the conductor, Walter Damrosch, told the audience afterwards that ''if a gifted young man can write a symphony like this at 25—within five years he will be ready to commit murder!'' Copland made the arrangement for orchestra alone for practical reasons, since not all concert halls have organs, but it has not helped to make the work known. As Symphony No. 1 the organ is conspicuous by its absence, in spite of some magical replacements, such as at 6'03'' in the last movement. Just before this (5'38'') Copland sets a slower tempo not marked in the score.
The Piano Concerto is the best feature of this release. Noel Lee approaches it exactly right—a spacious first movement contrasting the intimate soloist and expansive orchestra, a crazy cabaret stomp to follow (24 years later Copland used the same two-movement layout for his Clarinet Concerto but bridged it with a cadenza). Since these are all live performances, a few coughs mar the opening solo (0'57'') but it is not inappropriate in this 1920s music for the piano to sound a bit thin and close. In the second movement (5'49'') Lee follows Copland's performance—nobody could know quite how to do the pauses without Copland's example. This concentrated concerto works: why is it never played?
Inscape, with a title taken from Gerard Manley Hopkins, was Copland's last major orchestral piece—23 years before he died. It is grey and wintery, his compositional gift on the edge of extinction. In this performance, as earlier, the unreliable oboe intonation is a real handicap (try the opening thrust at 0'19''!) but it is fascinating to have Copland's only recorded performance of Inscape available, not sounding too bad considering the circumstances of performance.'