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Nothing happens again… London
Barbican
03/30/2000 -
Aaron Copland The tender land
Philippa Woodrow (Beth), Catherine Pierard (Mrs Moss), Neil Jenkins (Mr
Splinters), Laura Claycomb (Laurie), Roderick Williams (Top), Richard Coxon
(Martin), Richard Van Allan (Grandpa), Pamela Helen Stephen (Mrs Jenks),
Thomas Guthrie (Mr Jenks), Ameral Gunson (Mrs Splinters)
Richard Hickox (conductor)
City of London Sinfonia, Joyful Company of Singers Aaron Copland's The tender land could be uncharitably summarized as
"nothing happens; she leaves home". A gentle slice of American rural life
originally written for television in 1951, it is an avatar of "The
Waltons": the daughter of a rural family, about to graduate from high
school, falls in love with a vagrant who is suspected of being a rapist. He
and his buddy, originally hired to work on the family's farm, are cleared
of the crime but told to move on anyway. She wants to go with them, they
leave without her and she decides to leave anyway.
The tender land is closely related, musically and thematically, to
Oklahoma -- down to its heroine being called Laurie -- and to
Weill's Down in the valley, originally written for radio. The crisis
occurs at a party with an exhilarating near-minimalist dance-song, a hint
that the librettist "Horace Everett" was the dancer Erik Johns. It is
difficult not to find it slightly derivative, since much of the music is in
the Appalachian Spring style that is perhaps too familiar to
register from its diluted use in pastoral sounds tracks.
If you listen, though, Copland's score has an understated toughness that
might make you think of the developments from Paul Bunyan in
Britten's contemporary operas. Martin, the tenor hobo, is not Peter Grimes,
exactly -- he is too conventionally romantic and he has a buddy -- but he
is an outsider trying to belong in a stifling community that closes ranks
(in song). Where Grimes is excluded for real failings (as well as
nonconformity) by a conventional English borough, the persecution of Top
and Martin has a strong resonance of McCarthyite paranoia, which was
directed in particular at intellectuals of European Jewish descent like
Copland.
Richard Hickox, the Britten wonk of the moment, managed to bring out some
of the toughness in the score in a performance that was always idiomatic,
but the London Sinfonia strings were always lush and fluid.
The singers, all from opera backgrounds, found an inoffensive and
occasionally effective music-theatre style. Philippa Woodrow, a memorable
right-age Flora in the Royal Opera Turn of the screw a couple of
years ago, gave a superbly professional performance as Beth, Laurie's young
sister. Laura Claycomb, a striking looking but memorably inadequate
Fiakermilli at the San Francisco Opera a year or so ago, really could have
been in Oklahoma and was fine. Catherine Pierard looked and sounded
too operatic, but was often moving as the mother torn by love for her
daughter and the wish to protect her.
Richard Van Allan similarly had the aggression as Grandpa, but not the
roughness or any real nastiness. Richard Coxon in designer stubble looked
about right for Martin, but his singing wasn't quite lyrical or forceful
enough. Roderick Williams as his older buddy Top sounded considerably
sexier, positively dangerous in his rude song at the party.
The Joyful Company of Singers made a grand party sound.
H.E. Elsom
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