Originally posted by makropulos
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“The poignant and deep-felt movement does not come to a full conclusion, but proceeds all but seamlessly into the finale, which begins quietly with the woodwinds' statement of one of the themes heard in all three of the preceding movements, now transformed, or, one might say, clarifiedmso that its origin is recognized for the first time.It is the Fanfare for the Common Man, which Copland composed in 1942 as his contribution to a series of wartime fanfares commissioned form several American composers by Eugene Goossens, who was then conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Copland felt free to recycle it here, he said, because he never expected the original fanfare to attain such remarkable popularity as it has done in its own right, but that popularity, and its patriotic context, may be themselves acknowledged as providing the Third Symphony itself with its perceived symbolism.
This fanfare theme, subtly disguised, has gone through numerous merry, brooding and pastoral transformations in the Symphony's earlier movements, and now, following the woodwinds' brief prefatory gesture, it is reconstituted in its original proclamative form with brasses and drums. The entire finale is based on this theme, which returns again in more or less its original form in the coda, ending the Symphony in a blaze of exultation.
Leonard Slatkin, who recorded the Copland Third with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, chose it for his first program as music director designate of the NSO in September 1994 and has performed it with this orchestra more than twenty times prior to this week's concerts. His performances are based on Copland's original score, which differs in several details from the second published version, one of the more conspicuous alterations in that edition being a cut of eight measures at the very end of the work. The cut was the suggestion of Leonard Bernstein, who was the first conductor to take up the Third Symphony following its premiere under Koussevitzky. Bernstein first conducted it in Prague in June 1947, and first performed it with the cut at the end in Israel in the fall of the following year, reporting to Copland that "it makes a whale of a difference." Copland was eventually persuaded to sanction the cut when the score was published a second time, but Mr. Slatkin has steadfastly demonstrated his confidence in the original ending, feeling the big affirmative gesture is simply more emphatic and more convincing without the cut, more consonant with the overall balance of the work's grand design.
Richard Freed National Symphony Orchestra programme note, the Kennedy centre, Date: uncertain.
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