MUSIC REVIEW : Copland Tribute at the County Museum of Art

A belated celebration of Aaron Copland’s 90th birthday brought an unusually large audience to the latest Monday Evening Concert in Bing Theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. They were rewarded with an exceptionally well-planned and performed concert that neatly summed up Copland’s continuing importance to American music.

Composer-pianist Leo Smit presided over a program consisting of Copland rarities and 18 songs by composers befriended and encouraged by Copland. The nonagenarian may have founded no school, but he has certainly shown legions the way.

Smit opened with the neglected Quartet for piano and strings of 1950, Copland’s first venture with serial techniques. Perhaps its most remarkable quality is its recognizability as Copland from start to finish, despite the adoption of new methods.

Pianist Smit and his partners--violinist Elizabeth Baker, violist Valerie Dimond, cellist Roger Lebow--shaped its angularities into far-reaching phrases with delicate attacks and generous, singing tone. They built each movement to a single high point yet moment to moment never let expressiveness sag.

Later, pianist Adam Stern joined Smit for the original two-piano version of “Billy the Kid,” in its purported local premiere. Stripped of its orchestrational brilliances, the music impresses chiefly through rhythmic inventiveness and the subtlety of its settings of cowboy tunes.

The pianists stressed the score’s singing qualities. They underplayed its brashness, yet found plenty of heft and wit. In between came the 18 songs by friends of Copland, sung pointedly and humorously by soprano Rosalind Rees, accompanied avidly by Smit.

Though widely divergent in styles--from Marc Blitzstein’s “Jimmie’s Got a Goil” to William Schuman’s “Dosing on the Lawn” to David Raksin’s “Laura”--these songs share a directness of emotion and simplicity of means readily attributable to Copland’s influence.

Two among many high spots: the inspired silliness of Virgil Thomson’s “Susie Asado” and Irving Fine’s comic “Polaroli.” This was all aptly topped off by Copland’s “Simple Gifts.”