Classical Music
Tuesday, October 16, 2007; C0

Aaron Copland wrote his first film score for "The City," a documentary produced by the federal government in 1939 to advocate a new type of planned suburb ringed by a "green belt" of unspoiled nature. Many of the film's idyllic images of such communities came from the city of Greenbelt, which celebrates the 70th anniversary of its founding as a public cooperative this year.

Greenbelt is also convenient to the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, which is where the celebration went on Sunday afternoon, when the Post-Classical Ensemble and its music director, Angel Gil-Ordóñez, performed Copland's score and actor John Basinger provided narration to accompany a projection of "The City."

The live performance liberated Copland's score from the film's low-fidelity recording and made the music an equal partner with the film's images and words, presenting dated propaganda but with considerable dramatic power. The Post-Classical Ensemble synced precisely with the film (a challenge Gil-Ordóñez likened to "conducting an opera where the singers are robots") and vividly rendered Copland's striking music: a pastoral evocation of a New England village, rich with lambent wind chords; little melodic stabs matching frenetic cuts in a famous lunchroom montage; and a breezy ditty called "Sunday Traffic," mocking the ancestors of our random Beltway backups.

After the nightmarish big city, Copland's music for the utopian green belt town sounded pretty but insubstantial. Sunday's events engaged Greenbelt much more vividly: The ensemble's artistic director, Joseph Horowitz, led a conversation about the film and the urban planning ideas it advanced, and after the performance, a panel discussed whether Greenbelt has achieved the promise of "The City."

Hearing Copland's score in artistic, historical and social context made the concert experience all the richer.

-- Andrew Lindemann Malone