Coping with Copland

First of all, thanks to Alex Ross and Kenneth Woods for mentioning MMmusing recently. Ken eloquently defends Haydn's honor against my ongoing skepticism - I want to believe, I really do, and I find his kind of passionate advocacy encouraging. We'll see where I stand when the "Oxford" symphony reenters my life again for the Spring semester music history class.

Anyway, it's looking like a slow blogging week for work-based reasons. Among other things, I'm accompanying the Copland clarinet concerto in a recital tomorrow night. Nice piece, but one of my least favorite reductions to play (sorry, CS) because Copland apparently decided he needed to make his own reduction and yet not make any logical accommodations for the piano. I generally love playing piano reductions; pretending to be an orchestra is one of my favorite things about my life as a musician, but this one needs a lot of work. I have several pages that I've already re-notated to make them more workable, but I don't understand why Copland wouldn't have wanted to produce something more effective. The biggest problem is that he seems intent on keeping as much of the orchestra material as possible rather than reimagining the music in piano terms.

I'd love to write more about it, but I really should be practicing...