Two days ago we noted the first performance of Aaron Copland’s ballet Rodeo in 1942. Now we look at the first performance of his Symphony no.3, which took place on this day in 1946. The Third is Copland’s flagship symphony, an impressive and powerful work that reaches its apex with music that you will no doubt recognise as the Fanfare for the Common Man, written in 1942. Here is a fine performance of the whole work from the New York Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein, recorded for DG in 1986:
As with Rodeo, Emerson, Lake & Palmer were not far away, and their adaptation of the Fanfare for the Common Man became their biggest hit in 1977:
Published post no.2,691 – Saturday 18 October 2025
An important new release in the Sir Arthur Bliss anniversary year, from a record company who have done so much to advance the cause of the composer. This is the recording made around a concert in Nottingham in February, where the Metamorphic Variations were appraised by Arcana’s Richard Whitehouse.
Chandos write in their press release: “Perhaps now overshadowed by his earlier ballet Checkmate, Miracle in the Gorbals was a tremendous hit for Bliss and the Sadler’s Wells Ballet company. First performed in 1944, it was repeated in every season through to 1950. Based on a scenario by Michael Benthall (inspired by Jerome K. Jerome and Dostoyevsky), the ballet features the appearance of a Christ-like figure amid Glasgow’s most infamous slum. This mysterious Stranger performs a miracle, reviving the Girl Suicide, who in despair had earlier thrown herself into the Clyde. The locals rejoice, but an Official (Benthall had in mind a priest) is jealous and, after a failed attempt to cast doubt on the virtue of the Stranger via the local Prostitute, has him slashed to death by a razor gang.
Bliss’s score employs a wide range of styles and harmonic language, and also exploits Leitmotifs for the principal characters. Originally titled Variations for Orchestra, Bliss composed the Metamorphic Variations towards the end of his life, during a late surge of creativity. Two of the sixteen movements were dropped before the first performance (given by the LSO and Vernon Handley in 1973) and for some reason were not re-instated at any of the later performances of the work until that given by Michael Seal and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in February 2025, the day before they made this recording.
On this day in 1942, at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, the premiere of Aaron Copland’s ballet Rodeo took place. It was a wildly successful event, with no less than 22 curtain calls for a work that was to become one of Copland’s best-loved.
Often the Four Dance Episodes are performed as an extract for orchestra, and these contain two famous scenes in Buckaroo Holiday and the popular Hoe-Down, which you can enjoy below in a brilliant recording from the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas:
Thirty years after Rodeo’s premiere, progressive rock trio Emerson, Lake & Palmer put their own inimitable stamp on the Hoe-Down, with a virtuosic tour de force that stays faithful to the original but showcases the trio’s daredevil virtuosity, especially in this concert from Milan:
Published post no.2,689 – Thursday 16 October 2025
Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore have formed a formidable duo to release a new album, Tragic Magic, due out on 16 January 2026 via InFiné. Today they release the new single Melted Moon, one of “seven immersive, evocative songs” that make up the album. The press release details how, “together in freeform dialogue, voice and instrument, Barwick and Lattimore render a meditation on tragedy, wonder, and the restorative power of shared experience.”
The story continues: “Co-produced by Trevor Spencer (Fleet Foxes, Beach House), Tragic Magic came together in just nine days, a testament to the “musical telepathy,” as Barwick puts it, that has developed between the two artists over the years traveling the world as friends and tourmates. Sessions crossed improvisation with loose ideas they arrived in Paris with from Los Angeles, shortly after the January 2025 wildfires while still reeling for their community.
Barwick and Lattimore were given access to the extraordinary instrument collection of the Philharmonie de Paris’ Musée de la Musique in partnership with InFiné. The two artists embraced a divine setting, overwhelmed by the beauty and history at their fingertips. Lattimore selected three harps tracing the evolution of the instrument from 1728 to 1873, and Barwick chose several analog synthesizers that have shaped decades of exploratory music, including the Roland JUPITER and Sequential Circuits PROPHET-5, among other treasures.
“We were so lucky to have access to this experience. There was a lot of reverence, working with people with such warmth and enthusiasm, bringing these instruments into a modern context, literally taken off the shelves of the museum,” says Lattimore. “We wanted to honor the past while making music that we feel is a true expression of ourselves,” Barwick adds.
Today’s release of Melted Moon is accompanied by a video of Barwick and Lattimore performing the song live. Directed and edited by Joel Kazuo Knoernschild, the performance was filmed at Lou Lou’s Jungle Room at the Lafayette Hotel in San Diego this past April.”
The first single, Perpetual Adoration, is followed by the album’s closing track Melted Moon, a direct response to the Los Angeles wildfires in January 2025. The bold strokes of Lattimore’s harp soften as a calming chord progression asserts itself, before Barwick’s seraphic vocal adds a beautiful counter melody.
Barwick recalls “packing up her life under the dark ash clouds, “What do I need for these trips, but also, what do we need if we can’t come back to this house?” Lattimore lends a harp refrain that loops and echoes in the eventide, a measure in which she plays above as Barwick, uncharacteristically free of effects, offers her lyrics in poignant clarity, both haunting and hopeful (“Under the melted moon / The lights are all out / A strange taste in my mouth / You may never go home again / At least not the home you know”).
The notion embodies Tragic Magic as a whole: two artists and friends processing life through music, observing moments and working through emotions, contributing what they can to the world, within a lineage of creative expression and visionary invention represented by the very tools they used to realize this project.
Published post no.2,688 – Wednesday 15 October 2025
photo courtesy of Wikipedia – by Reijo Koskinen / Lehtikuva
by Ben Hogwood
On this day in 1970, the first performance took place of a remarkable new work from Witold Lutosławski. The Cello Concerto was written for the great Mstislav Rostropovich, who gave the premiere with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under Sir Edward Downes at the Royal Festival Hall.
Here is a more recent account from the fine cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Dima Slobodeniouk:
Arcana.fm 