Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein - Music For The Theatre (1998) CD-Rip

Copland began his Music for the Theatre in May 1925 in New York City, but the bulk of the composition was written at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire during the summer. Having been impressed with Copland's earlier Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (1924), conductor Sergey Koussevitzky (1874-1951) urged the League of Composers to commission an orchestral piece from Copland, to be performed the following season. Music for the Theatre received its first performance on November 20, 1925, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Koussevitzky, who directed another performance for the League of Composers on November 28.
In five movements, Copland's Music for the Theatre (the composer preferred the British spelling) represents a deliberate attempt to compose "American" music. It thus stands in contrast to the strongly European Organ Symphony. To establish an American style for the piece, Copland looked particularly to jazz and blues, an influence evident from the very beginning. The piece has no programmatic associations. As the composer explained, "the title simply implies that at times this music has a quality which is suggestive of the theatre." Devoid of linear counterpoint, Music for the Theatre is filled with melodies and harmonic accompaniments in the manner of a popular song.
Music for the Theatre is scored for a small orchestra consisting of winds, two trumpets, trombone, percussion, piano, and a small string ensemble. Theatrical aspects indeed abound in Music for the Theatre, which begins with a solo trumpet that announces the jazzy first theme after an unmetered repeated-note passage for trumpet that opens the sonata-form Prologue movement. Strings enter and provide accompaniment for the oboe that intones the second theme. The development section is climactic and leads to a return of the opening material. Polyrhythmic writing constantly pushes the music forward.
The "Dance" second movement, marked Allegro molto, is brief and frenetic with infectious rhythms; it incorporates the popular song "East Side, West Side." The Lento Interlude features lyrical writing and solo woodwind passages, and presents the same elegant melody three times on different instruments. The English horn opens with an introduction before the clarinet plays the primary theme over a transparent accompaniment of strings, piano, and glockenspiel.
In two parts, the lively "Burlesque" (Allegro vivo) bounces along in 3/8 time. Its two sections alternate in an ABAB pattern and propel the music forward to a witty close. Nothing new appears in the Molto moderato Epilogue, in which the mood and themes of the Prologue and Interlude return to round off the entire piece and create a very quiet close.