Copland: Quiet City

 In Copland’s Quiet City, we travel through a major city in the 1940s, filled with nostalgia and feverish energy. The piece is written for string orchestra, cor anglais and trumpet and as soloists we see Carolina Grinne and Bengt Danielsson from the orchestra. 

Brooklyn-born Aaron Copland is the American composer who, with his music, most embodied the country’s spirit and landscape. In the late 1930s he wrote the score for Quiet City, a play by Irwin Shaw. It is about a young musician, who expresses his and others’ feelings through his trumpet. The piece was withdrawn for revision before the premiere, and Copland was persuaded by friends to instead use parts of the thematic material for an orchestral piece in 1940. He partially reworked the score, adding a solo English horn for balance, accompanied by strings.

The incredible Barbara Hannigan is the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra’s principal guest conductor.