Three of the four American pieces performed this evening by Northern Sinfonia were written to evoke very particular places, and got me thinking about the evocative power of a well-chosen title. The concert opened and closed with two pieces by Aaron Copland: Quiet City, a tone poem salvaged from music written for an unsuccessful play; and one of his best known pieces, the Appalachian Spring ballet suite. Two very different scenarios: the introspective and haunting sound of a city at night, and the simple joys of the rugged outdoor pioneer life, and yet both works sounded remarkably similar. Then I read the programme notes and discovered that the title of Appalachian Spring was only applied after the music was completed, and even so, Copland was warmly congratulated for his skill at evoking the Appalachian mountains.
Quiet City is a beautifully simple piece, scored for small string orchestra with solo trumpet and cor anglais. Richard Martin’s trumpet playing had a lovely warmth and the sort of lyricism that we usually expect only from the larger brass instruments: proof that trumpets don’t always have to be loud. The opening repeated notes of the trumpet solo, echoed in a muted coda, suggested the hoots of distant car-horns, immediately setting us in the heart of a busy city. Using the warm reedy tone of the cor anglais was an inspirational piece of instrumentation on Copland’s part, Michael O’Donnell’s silky playing suggesting late-night jazz and quiet conversation.
Appalachian Spring is probably best known for its quoting of the old Shaker song Simple Gifts and this section was the highlight of a performance that, at times, seemed to lose its way – and in fact, throughout the concert, the livelier sections were better suited to the exuberant style of guest conductor Nicholas Collon. The Shaker song begins with a solo clarinet, played with a lovely lightness of touch by Jessica Lee, before being taken up warmly by the strings, and elaborated on by flourishes from piano and flute.
The other programmatic work of the evening was Charles Ives’ Three Places in New England. Ives combined composing with a day-job running an insurance company, and much of his pioneering music was left archived in his house, to be discovered and performed after his death. Three Places in New England is an impressionistic mixture, full of quotations from popular American songs, and atmospheric scene-setting. The most effective part of tonight’s performance was the gloriously chaotic second movement, Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut, in which rival bands at a Fourth of July picnic recall the two approaching armies on the battlefield. Nicholas Collon held the competing bands together wonderfully, and it was so much fun, it was hard to contain my laughter (and glancing around, I could see I was not alone in this).