Rodeo / Billy the Kid

In the 1930s, having experimented by turns with jazz and dissonant abstract works, Aaron Copland recognised that most music-lovers simply did not like the music being written by contemporary “serious” composers. He decided to try writing “plain” music, substantial yet enjoyable, which would bring them back to the concert-halls, and in so doing single-handedly forged a distinctive “open-air” American style of music rooted in the mythology of the old West. Here are the suites from his three great “Western” ballets, preceded by the stirring Fanfare for the Common Man, written in 1942 as a patriotic wartime piece.