Film Scores: The Red Pony (Aaron Copland)
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- Опубликовано: 25 авг 2024
- Copland's score for John Steinbeck's The Red Pony represents the summit of his "populist" phase. It captures the youthful freshness of the idealized American West as no other music has, and the composer fashioned his score into this very shapely suite for concert audiences. It really deserves to be played far more frequently, but thank goodness we have recordings.
Musical Examples courtesy of Naxos Records
The Red Pony is such a wonderful score. It was actually my first conscious exposure to Copland’s music. I’m glad it was. Great memories.
Wonderful film score indeed! I have enjoyed Copland’s movie music for years on an RCA CD with Slatkin and St. Louis.
Fabulous disc!
i discovered this wonderful, "Red Pony" music earlier this year and was both delighted and surprised by just how truly splendid and moving it is for such a comparatively neglected work. Thanks for giving it the attention that it most truly deserves, Mr. Hurwitz, and thanks for reminding me of how lucky the USA was to find its authentic, musical "voice" through the genius of Aaron Copland.
The Red Pony has Copeland written all over it !! Copeland has such distinctive signature tunes. Thanks,David for playing excerpts from your chosen recordings. It makes your presentations more insightful .
Really lovely music. Jerry Goldsmith scored the made-for-TV movie of the same name in 1973. I can see where he drew his inspiration. Incidentally, Goldsmith's entire score was released in 2012 (Varese Sarabande). It's such a shame that film music never attained the respect that it so richly deserves. I'm glad that is changing.
Come on Sony, we need the Complete Copland.
All of his own recordings + all of Bernstein, Ormandy, Tilson-Thomas' and Andre Previn (Previn's first legit classical LP was the Red Pony Suite with the St. Louis Symphony).
Then fill in the gaps with new or licensed recordings.
I like The red Pony suite! My recording is an older Previn/St. Louis. My first exposure to it was when I palyed it in the group in college.
Nice talk. I enjoy "The Red Pony" also.
In addition to the Red Pony, I also really like the suite to Our Town. What a great score and would love to hear a complete recording of it someday.
I love this score! I think I had Slatkins record, but it's been a while. I also have a vague memory of seeing the movie when it came out. We payed to get in with bottle tops. Hundreds of kids yelling and jumping all over the place, throwing stuff. It was awful.
With regard to “Something Wild,” according to the IMDB website, the leading lady (Carroll Baker) and her husband (director Jack Garfein) paid a big portion of Copland’s fee because the production company wouldn’t (or couldn’t) afford it. Baker went on to say she had to make “two or three westerns” afterward (e.g. “How the West Was Won”) to make up the difference.
A few years ago, Intrada Records released the original RED PONY recordings. Sadly it was a limited edition and it's now out of print.
But yeah, someone has to get on recording Copland's film scores.
Dave. may I suggest Nino Rota, especially his beautiful music for La Strada. Apologies if someone else has already suggested it!
Love that music; I will see if I can find a recording I have permission to use.
@@DavesClassicalGuide I have just discovered it on the Riccardo Muti Italian Masters box! Beautifully played too.
The Red Pony is my absolute favorite Copland score 👍
Great talk. I'd like to suggest Schnittke's music to The Story of the Unknown Actor and The Commissar, which are on Naxos and you could use samples. Then we'd finally have that long overdue talk on Schnittke. 😉
I fully support your proposal, and his film music is a good starting point; I don't really know what to make of most of the rest of his music, so yes, a Schnittke talk would be nice. Not sure it's on Naxos though, but it's definitely on Capriccio.
I love this score! An interesting one might be The 49th Parallel by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Hello David!
I heard the Copland conducts Copland version with the New Philharmonia Orchestra and it was sepectacular! It is really amazing music!
While I was watching this video, I remenbered a question that I would really like to hear your answer:
Were is (or is there) the line between Classical Music and Film Scores? And I am not just talking about Copland's, Shostakovich's, Vaughan Williams' or Prokofiev's wonderful Film Scores, I include the modern industry of Film Scores: John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Alan Silvestri and Ennio Morricone.
I am excited to hear your answer!
Thank you for your time, take care.
In short, no. Great music is great music. Film music is "incidental music," like the theatrical scores of the 19th century. If Grieg's Peer Gynt can be "classical," so can Star Wars or anything else.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Thank you Dave, your simple but really clarifying anwers always help on solving any doubts. A big Thank you for giving away time to answer questions. Take care.
Great choice of Copland’s The Red Pony. John Barry also excelled in portraying the Great Plains of the United States (and Africa); Dances with Wolves, Out of Africa, Born Free. Any one of those would be good examples.
Also, Leonard Bernstein’s single film score to On the Waterfront is a powerful component to that great film.
Well the Red Pony is one of my very favourite film scores. Will you look at West Side Story at some point? Topical at the moment, with the new movie. But I was listening to the Symphonic Dances this evening and was struck by just how many songs are built on the same motif at the start of ‘Maria’. Bernstein had good reason to pull it together as one piece, because the separate numbers don’t necessarily make this unity clear. Given your predilection for structure and form, I’d bet you could astonish a good few people who though they knew the score.
What lovely music, this is! Dave, could you do a video of recordings, that you would recommend to someone, like me, who does not know the less well known American composers. Thank you.
Este fue el resultado de que Dvořák y entre otros, visitara Estados Unidos. Tremenda Influencia.
The idea of a Brooklyn Jew giving us the epitome of the American West is what makes Copland both a great composer and demonstrates what makes our country so unique in this world. We are all one people, even as forces try to divide us, music like this gives me hope!
Every country (and everything else which is not a country, for that matter) is unique unless you believe in the multiverse! As for great music, and that includes "The Red Pony Suite", it can literally change the world for the better: it inspires our creativity and helps our cells vibrate at a higher frequency level, it helps plants grow better and healthier, it makes cows produce better milk and lambs better wool... Great Music is Human Magic. No wonder it gives you hope. Power predators on the other hand need to keep as many people as possible hooked on low vibrational levels using fear, terror, hate, greed, envy, toxic chemicals, scape goats, junk (or detritus) culture, junk food... which reminds me, wasn't the former mayor of NY offering fries and burgers to people as reward for getting jabbed? Now, THAT's unique... :-) Associating junk food (which is unhealthy) with whatever is in these vials, isn't that perverse?
The Copland Collection has a pretty comprehensive version of the Red Pony. On Sony Classical. I believe Copland conducts.
It's the standard suite.
Yikes, I’m glad the only Steinbeck they made me read was Of Mice and Men and Grapes of Wrath. Nightmare fuel about equine Caesarian sections notwithstanding, the clips from this suite are very fun, from that ultimate western cowboy (ie gay Jewish Brooklynite) composer.
Nevsky! Nevsky! Nevsky! Also, how did he do such a menacing battle on the ice?
I've already done a Nevsky video.
Walton Henry V then! The Battle Sequence in that one is every bit as intense as Nevsky's.
According to Andre Previn the music was wonderful but the movie itself was quote: "Awful"