‘Copland and More’@ Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra
—Wayne Lee Gay
Last Saturday, the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and music director Robert Spano moved from the usual downtown venue of Bass Performance Hall to the Van Cliburn Recital Hall on the campus of Texas Christian University for a consistently engaging, artistically superb concert featuring works of three American composers.
The one-time-only event honored the memory of Fort Worth civic leader Mollie Lasater, who died on March 26 of this year. Lasater achieved local prominence as an elected member and later president of the Fort Worth ISD Board of Education; she was also a prominent supporter of the Fort Worth Symphony, and an advocate and activist for the orchestra's education programs.
Two of Aaron Copland's enduring ballet scores from the 1940s, Appalachian Spring and Rodeo, opened and closed the evening. Eight decades later, it's easy to hear elements of the sophisticated urbanity of mid-twentieth-century New York as well as the sturdy energy of the folk tunes from which Copland drew for these scores. Conductor Spano reveled in the contrasting elements— of open-air serenity in Copland's broad harmonies, and in the pulsating rhythms of the young America he portrayed here.
Between the two Copland scores, soprano Susanna Phillips joined the orchestra for two works. Samuel Barber's Knoxville Summer of 1915 features a complex but compelling marriage of Barber's neo-romantic tonal language with author James Agee's memories of a time when people sat on front porches, listened to the occasional clang of a streetcar, and stretched out in the backyard on blankets to watch the stars. In contrast to Copland's wholesale embrace of pioneer energy, this collaboration of Barber and Agee creates a subtle atmosphere, with delicate hints of sorrow.
Soprano Phillips brought not only a beautiful voice and superb musical technique but also emotional insight in the weight—and beauty—of each syllable: the word "casually" never sounded so wonderful as when Phillips sang it.
After intermission and before Rodeo--in the midst of a concert otherwise dedicated to works from the 1940s—Phillips returned to join Spano and the orchestra for a very new work, Alan Fletcher's Three American Songs, which Spano premiered with Renée Fleming and the Aspen Festival Orchestra in 2024.
The first movement, built around the old hymn "Wondrous Love," opens with restrained resonance before blossoming into a lush orchestral background as the soprano sings of seraphim and cornets; it then recedes into more quiet references to death. The second movement reworks the nineteenth-century sentimentality of Stephen Foster's "Slumber, My Darling" into engaging lyricism. The final movement, titled "The Cuckoo," plays with motifs from various folksongs, creating a delightful mixture of simple lively melodies against a rhythmically complex orchestral backdrop. Phillips continued to bring musical expertise and emotional insight throughout the three movements of a work that should make a worthy addition to the repertoire of American orchestras.
The composer was present for the audience's enthusiastic ovation before a nearly sold-out audience in the 750-seat Cliburn Recital Hall, which proved both an attractive visual setting as well as a fine acoustical environment for the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.
WHEN: May 16, 2026
WHERE: Van Cliburn Recital Hall @ TCU (2805 S. University), Fort Worth
WEB: fwsymphony.org
