Barber * Copland * Gershwin

'American Piano Concertos'

Barber Piano Concerto, Op 38 Copland Piano

Concerto Gershwin Piano Concerto

Xiayin Wang pf

Royal Scottish National Orchestra / Peter Oundjian

Chandos [F] [SACD]. CHSA5128 (76' * DDD/DSD)

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Premiered in 1927, Copland's Piano Concerto was described by one critic as 'a jazz dance hall next to a poultry yard', by another as 'a harrowing horror from beginning to end'. Today the only passages that raise an eyebrow are Copland's jejune attempts to assimilate jazz rhythms into his musical vocabulary (he himself admitted in a 1985 interview, 'Actually, I wouldn't know how to write a real jazz piece'). Nevertheless, he and Leonard Bernstein make these completely convincing in their 1964 recording. Oundjian is too literal here, often making Copland sound like bad Gershwin (or a send-up of it). His woodwinds are in a different part of the sound picture to the piano, disengaged from their dialogue with the soloist. …