CD Review
Copland / Aldridge: Clarinet Concertos
- Composer
- Copland / Aldridge
- Artist
- David Singer, clarinet, A Far Cry; The Shanghai Quartet
- Label
- Naxos
- Catalogue
- 8.559667
Released on Naxos in 2010, this disc pairs Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, commissioned by Benny Goodman and completed in 1948, and one of the most frequently performed American concertos for the instrument, with the world premiere recording of a Clarinet Concerto by the American composer Robert Aldridge. Clarinettist David Singer is joined by A Far Cry, the Boston-based collective of young professional string players known for performing without a conductor, and by the Shanghai Quartet.
Copland’s concerto sits at the more accessible, jazz-inflected end of his output, written explicitly with Goodman’s swing-era sensibility in mind, a lyrical, slow-paced first movement giving way to a syncopated, virtuosic second half connected by a cadenza. Pairing it with a genuinely new work in the same scoring, clarinet against string orchestra, no other winds or brass, lets a listener hear how a contemporary American composer approaches the same basic problem Copland faced: writing a substantial concert piece that still speaks in an idiom close to popular American musical vernacular.
About the concerto pairing
Robert Aldridge is an American composer perhaps best known for his opera Elmer Gantry, whose Naxos recording won the 2012 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. His Clarinet Concerto, receiving its first recording here, sits comfortably alongside Copland’s without being derivative of it, both composers write for the instrument’s full range and its idiomatic strengths in jazz-adjacent American music, but Aldridge’s harmonic language is very much his own rather than an exercise in Copland pastiche. For listeners who know Copland’s concerto well, hearing it programmed directly against a genuinely new work in the same scoring is a useful way to hear what’s actually distinctive about Copland’s own voice, rather than treating “American clarinet concerto” as a single undifferentiated style.
About the performers
David Singer has built a career spanning both classical and jazz-adjacent repertoire, making him a natural interpreter of Copland’s own genre-crossing concerto. A Far Cry, founded in Boston in 2007, works as a self-conducted, democratically run string orchestra, a structure that suits the kind of rhythmically alert, chamber-music-scaled playing both concertos demand, rather than the more hierarchical dynamic of a conductor-led ensemble. The Shanghai Quartet, founded in 1983 and one of the most recorded string quartets of its generation, adds further chamber-music precision to the disc’s string-orchestra sound.
A note on this page
No original mmmusic review text for this page survived in any archive we could recover. Rather than guess at what was originally written, the text above has been written fresh from verified facts about the recording and its performers.
Questions about this recording
Why pair Copland's Clarinet Concerto with Aldridge's?
Both are American concertos written for clarinet and string orchestra, giving a natural single-disc pairing of an established 20th-century classic with a genuinely new work in the same idiom.
Is Aldridge's concerto a world premiere recording?
Yes, this Naxos disc gave Robert Aldridge's Clarinet Concerto its first recording.
Who commissioned Copland's Clarinet Concerto originally?
Benny Goodman, the celebrated jazz and swing clarinettist, commissioned it in the 1940s; Copland completed it in 1948, and it remains one of the most-performed American clarinet concertos.
Is this recording still available to buy?
Yes, Naxos's catalogue number 8.559667 remains widely available through the label and classical retailers. We don't run an in-house shop, so we link out to Amazon and Discogs below.
