*** very rare ***
Bernstein is in his element, as Stanley Drucker gives a most tender, kindly, mercurial and virtuosic reading of the Clarinet Concerto. ...Made four years after the Third Symphony recording Bernstein and the NYPO allowed the DG engineering team into the Avery Fisher Hall again in October 1989... In El Salon Mexico Bernstein is in his element with music that could have been written for him. Certainly he knew the score intimately having prepared the piano reduction for the composer from the full score shortly after it had been written. from The recording is spectacular and the bass drum thwacks at 10:53 still vibrate the light fittings and reverberate against the rib-cage. Stanley Drucker by then an old-timer with the NYPO gives a most tender, kindly, mercurial and virtuosic reading of the Clarinet Concerto. Drucker’s way with the more lyrically singing music had me reconsidering my prejudices against this work. This is by the far the best recording of it that I have heard. The five part suite Copland called Music for the Theatre is spare, Stravinskian, circus-brash and humane. The languid singer can be heard in the lazy stroll in the third movement of the five. The disc traces Copland’s progress from the accessible Salon via stages of sophistication until we reach the ultima thule of Connotations which is both imposing and thorny; one of Copland’s serial compositions. Was he really such a dedicated follower of fashion? It remains a vivid and anguished testament. -- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International