I know things are dry in Arizona but is that any excuse for the sound here? You'll be needing a lot of help from your volume control if you are to put any significant flesh on it. The string tone is especially shallow, and whilst the Phoenix Symphony violins are plainly vulnerable (the Achilles heel of the orchestra) I am not inclined to lay the blame entirely at their door. Such deficiencies, though, do constitute something of a drawback for Copland, who loves taking his fiddles up to where the air is cleanest. He also loves displaying his simple gifts for the ready folk-tune and in that at least the Phoenix woodwinds have what it takes.
It has been interesting rehearing Copland's Tender Land suite in the light of my close encounters with Philip Brunelle's Virgin Classics recording (8/90) of the complete opera. So skilful is Copland's orchestral transcription that one might easily be lulled into thinking that all this material had been conceived solely for the orchestra. As trumpets signal a new dawn over the open prairies of the introduction, Laurie and Martin's love blossoms with or without their words in some of the most generous music outside Appalachian Spring. That evocative solo trumpet again leads the emotional surge. No problems of course with the barn dancing ''Party Scene'' (Rodeo's ''Hoe-down'' revisited), but I do miss the heady mix of human voices in the sequence that everyone leaves the theatre humming: the Act 1 finale, ''The Pro- mise of Living''. This is Steinbeck country just as surely as is The Red Pony.
James Sedares leads a spirited rendition of that suite, his orchestra's warm and willing woodwinds again stealing the honours. The boy Jody's day-dreams bring a swell march and Petrushka-like circus antics, and there is genuine pathos in Grandfather's lament for the old West. Which leaves the Latin American Sketches. ''Estribillo'' sounds a little post-siesta to me; ''Paisaje Mexicano'' is definitely pre-siesta (a lovely languid clarinet here), while ''Danza de Jalisco'' is lively without ever quite conveying that off-the-page panache. I think that probably goes for the whole disc.'