Anyone thinking that the eight Abraham Lincoln pieces offered here exhausted the store of musical representations of the 16th U.S. president will be quickly disabused; they represent a selection from about 90 pieces that were considered. For some composers, the Nashville Symphony and conductor Leonard Slatkin would have had a choice of multiple Lincoln pieces. Nevertheless, the program as it stands now is an attractive one, with two well-known pieces as bookends to a host of unknowns, and several works that are effectively ...
Read More
Anyone thinking that the eight Abraham Lincoln pieces offered here exhausted the store of musical representations of the 16th U.S. president will be quickly disabused; they represent a selection from about 90 pieces that were considered. For some composers, the Nashville Symphony and conductor Leonard Slatkin would have had a choice of multiple Lincoln pieces. Nevertheless, the program as it stands now is an attractive one, with two well-known pieces as bookends to a host of unknowns, and several works that are effectively played off against each other. In addition to Copland's familiar Lincoln Portrait, for example, there's Vincent Persichetti's A Lincoln Address, setting the Second Inaugural Address. The work was written for Nixon's corresponding inaugural, but Nixon's agents demanded the excision of certain passages of the text that might have been construed as antiwar (which tells you something!). The work was eventually withdrawn, and other orchestras rushed to perform it in its original version....
Read Less