Symphony No. 3

Copland’s Symphony No. 3 was his largest orchestral work, a masterpiece that drew together every aspect of his musical style. Besides the sense of expansive space that dominates the first and third movements, the symphony also deploys the dance-like verve of Copland’s Appalachian Spring (1944) and earlier ballet scores. The composer’s fellow feeling with heroic and aspiring humanity reaches a pinnacle in the finale, which incorporates his Fanfare for the Common Man (1942) at its opening and close. Work on the symphony had begun even before Copland received a commission in 1944 from Serge Koussevitzky, music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, whose impressive brass section helped to cinch the Fanfare’s presence in the finale; the piece was completed three weeks before its premiere in Boston on 18 October 1946. The first movement’s opening theme on strings and woodwind, at once calm and purposeful, builds toward a sequence of powerful central climaxes, then to the serenity of the main theme’s reprise. After the second movement’s busy energy comes complete contrast: Copland dedicated the symphony “to the memory of my dear friend Natalie Koussevitzky”, the late wife of the conductor, a tribute expressed in the third movement’s poignant lyricism. This leads without a break into the finale where, in a quiet masterstroke, the Fanfare material is introduced by a single flute and clarinet. The brass section at once takes it up in resplendent style, and the movement that unfolds eventually arrives at the grandest of closing perorations.