Usually, the shorter 20-minute suite from Aaron Copland’s ballet Appalachian Spring is performed. However, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra’s Chief Conductor Ryan Bancroft prefers the complete ballet score, which is what is performed here. In an interview for Lyssna, Konserthuset’s magazine, he commented:

“It is probably one of the works I have conducted most often in my life. I have also danced in the ballet – I performed the Evangelist. We are playing the full ballet version. I prefer the complete score, which has a clearer sense of line. It is a work written in wartime, but that is not reflected in the suite, since it does not include the long battle scene. Is it an actual battle, or does it take place within someone’s inner world? There is a surreal element here that is fascinating.”

Aaron Copland was the son of a Jewish-Lithuanian immigrant department store owner in Brooklyn, and one of the foremost American composers of his generation. Appalachian Spring was written in 1944 for the renowned choreographer and dancer Martha Graham. The ballet is set in spring at a frontier homestead in Pennsylvania around 1830, and portrays a young pioneer couple and their hopes for the future. Created towards the end of the Second World War, the work also captured the aspirations of American audiences, who were beginning to glimpse a brighter, more hopeful future.