Emiko Edwards provides eloquent advocacy for Copland’s piano music
“Rodeo”: Piano music of Aaron Copland. Emiko Edwards. (Lexicon Classics).
In 2024 Emiko Edwards performed a rich and varied program of American piano music at Ganz Hall for the American Music Project, spanning from Meredith Monk to Leon Kirchner. That recital included a thrilling performance of Aaron Copland’s Piano Variations, which is included on her new disc of Copland keyboard works.
Edwards shows complete sympathy with Copland’s intensely challenging keyboard style. As in her live performance of the Piano Variations, Edwards conveys the mercurial expression of this taut angular work with deep sympathy, from the spare moonlit music to the explosive virtuosity of the hard-driving variations.
If anything, the performance of Copland’s Piano Sonata is even finer. In the opening movement, Edwards’ playing is sharply pointed yet not over-vehement—the marking is the somewhat contradictory Molto moderato—with a seamless segue into the spikier middle section before the withdrawn close. Edwards has a real feel for Copland’s restless rhythmic shifts, as clear in the jazzy caprice of the middle movement.
Her reading culminates in a spacious rendering of the Andante sostenuto finale. This deeply felt threnody is given weight yet subtle dynamic marking, and Edwards’ draws out the final section with poised and richly eloquent expression.
Oddly, considering “Rodeo” is the title of this program—and the inspiration for her offbeat cover photo—the pianist only includes a single excerpt from Copland’s ground-breaking ballet, an elegant, heartfelt rendering of “Saturday Night Waltz.”
She dispatches Copland’s Four Piano Blues with fine feeling and rhythmic snap, registering the moods from languid to buoyant. The program is framed by two miniatures, and Edwards draws out the simple nostalgia of In Evening Air and Down a Country Lane with a natural lyricism. The sound on the disc is excellent, closely balanced yet not oppressively so.
There is likely no better Copland pianist currently before the public than Emiko Edwards, and few as dedicated to such a broad wealth of American piano music. Let us hope she follows this up with a second Copland disc offering a complete Rodeo and the epic Piano Fantasy.
Emiko Edwards’ “Rodeo” is only available via streaming. Go to her page at Lexicon Classics here.
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