Remembering Leo Smit (1921-1999)

Leo Smit's Friends and Associates: Aaron Copland

Photograph by Irving Copland, courtesy of Nils Vigeland on behalf of the Leo Smit estate.

Aaron Copland and Leo Smit at the 92nd St. YMHA in New York, November 16, 1980.

Aaron Copland and Leo Smit met for the first time in 1943. Smit had received a copy of Copland's Piano Sonata, and once he had learned the work, arranged to meet Copland to play it for him. Copland was impressed with Smit's musical interpretation and the two quickly developed a friendship that lasted until Copland's death in 1990.

Copland, known for lending his support to young musicians, encouraged Smit's compositional efforts and introduced Smit to his circle of friends. David Diamond, Harold Shapero, and Elliott Carter were among the many prominent musicians that Smit met through his association with Aaron Copland.

Copland introduced Smit to Leonard Bernstein in 1943 at a Carnegie Hall concert where Smit was acting as page-turner for Béla Bartók during a performance of Bartók's Sonata for two pianos and percussion. Three years later, in October 1946, Smit was the soloist in performances of Copland's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra with the New York City Symphony, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. These were the first performances of the piece in the United States in sixteen years, and all previous performances had been with Copland as the soloist. Copland wrote of the Bernstein and Smit performances:

Lenny and Leo handled the rhythmic complexities of the Concerto with ease. Leo is a far better pianist than I - I had played the work like a composer, while he was a dazzling performer with enormous vitality and yet he kept everything absolutely clean and precise.

Bernstein and Smit continued to work together throughout their careers, including Smit's stint as pianist with Bernstein's New York City Symphony, 1947-48 and Bernstein's performances of Smit's Symphony No. 2 with the New York Philharmonic in 1966.

Photograph courtesy of Nils Vigeland on behalf of the Leo Smit estate.

Aaron Copland and Leo Smit at the May 1958 Ojai Festival

In 1958, Copland and Smit were particpants at the Ojai Festival in California. Copland conducted a performance of Smit's Capriccio for String Orchestra on May 23rd at the festival. Smit fondly recalled the performance in the autobiographical program notes he wrote for the Bridge Records release of his 33 Songs on Poems of Emily Dickinson in April 1999. At the same festival, Copland conducted a performance of Alex Haieff's Piano Concerto No. 1 with Smit as piano soloist. Haieff composed the work for Smit while they were both in Rome as Fellows at the American Academy (1950-51). Smit was also the soloist at the premiere performance of the work with the CBS Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski in April 1952.

For his part, Leo Smit was always an advocate for Copland's music. In addition to his performances of the solo piano works and the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Smit also arranged Copland's The Second Hurricane and Danzón Cubano for solo piano. Copland found the first arrangement too simple for concert performance, so did not approve its publication. The arrangement of Danzón Cubano was published by Boosey & Hawkes in 1949, but is rarely performed due to its high level of difficulty. In addition to his work on the two arrangements, Smit also edited the 1981 Boosey & Hawkes publication of a collection of Copland's solo piano compositions.

Leo Smit was the first pianist to present a program of all of Copland's piano music. The first of these concerts took place on June 1, 1977, at a June in Buffalo festival concert at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Later, in November of the same year, he repeated the program at Harvard University and Carnegie Hall.

Morton Feldman, Leo Smit, and Aaron Copland June 1, 1977 on the campus of the State University of New York at Buffalo.

In January 1978 Smit recorded the complete solo piano music of Copland for Columbia Records. Included in the compositions is Four Piano Blues, the first of which was written for Leo Smit.

Click on image to see full album cover.

Photograph courtesy of Nils Vigeland on behalf of the Leo Smit estate.

Leo Smit with Aaron Copland in Copland's studio, around the time that Smit recorded Copland's complete solo piano music.

Aaron Copland's 80th birthday in 1980 was celebrated in many venues across the United States. The actual date of his birthday, November 14th, was reserved for a special, gala performance by the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, were in attendance. Conductors on the all-Copland program included Mstislav Rostropovich, Leonard Bernstein, and Copland. Leo Smit was the soloist in Copland's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, with Copland conducting. Smit continued the celebration of Copland's 80th birthday when he performed a program of Copland's solo piano music two days later at the 92nd St. YMHA in New York City.

Photograph courtesy of Nils Vigeland on behalf of the Leo Smit estate.

Leo Smit, with Rosalynn Carter, Aaron Copland, President Jimmy Carter, Leonard Bernstein, and Mstislav Rostropovich at the November 14, 1980 concert honoring Copland's 80th birthday at the Kennedy Center, Washington, D. C.

Photograph courtesy of Nils Vigeland on behalf of the Leo Smit estate.

Leo Smit with Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein backstage at the Kennedy Center, November 14, 1980.

Leo Smit was often asked to provide commentary about Copland and his music. Vivian Perlis interviewed Smit in 1981 for the book she co-authored with Copland, Copland, Since 1943. In the interview Smit described the piano playing of Aaron Copland as follows:

I always admired Aaron's own piano playing because of the clarity with which he was able to convey the intent of his musical thought, without gorgeous tonal quality or brilliant technique. Yet the rhythmic drive, for one thing, had such an infectious quality of joy. It came out of his whole physical being. And his lonely melodies, the sense of isolation and the stopping of time. I thought his playing unique, extraordinary. I didn't mind the harshness of his tone. I'd rather have that than a crooning, "poetic" touch.

Smit wrote the following tribute to Aaron Copland on the occasion of Copland's 70th birthday in 1970.

One of the special characteristics of musical genius is embodied in the cuckoo instinct. This interesting bird, which is anything but foolish, lays its eggs in other bird's nests, always selecting the nests of smaller birds. The large, noisy baby cuckoos, upon hatching, demand and receive preferential feeding at the expense of the legitimate fledglings and consequently grow up faster and stronger. The composer who captures other bird's nests make them work for him, increasing his productivity and, depending upon the location of the nest and the nature of the surrogate-parent, enriching the quality of his musical progeny.

J. S. Bach, the Olympian cuckoo of the 18th century, deposited many pretty eggs throughout musical Europe; in England and France, where fancy suites were hatched; in Italy, which nurtured volumes of variations and concerti; in Spain, which incubated the once wildly sensuous Saraband and Chaconne, now tamed and idealized.

And Beethoven, the aquiline cuckoo of the Vienna Woods - who immortalized his two-note signature in the Pastoral Symphony - turned his fiercely paternal instincts, not so much onto other bird's nests, as towards other species, lavishing his ferocious affection on the Handelian and Cerubinian genera. With prophetic aim he also hurled a clutch of unusually heavy eggs into the nests of birds that did not yet exist, but which later came to be known as the Schubertian and Brahmsian species. (Some musical Audubonians actually list the Wagnerian Warbler as a sub-species.)

There are 142 species of cuckoo in the Old World, but in North America we find only two genuine members of the cuckoo family - the Ivesian Coccyzus erythropthalmus and the Coplandian coccyzus americanus. The roadrunner, though a member of the cuckoo clan, lacks artistic imagination, hence does its own rearing.

The Ivesian nest was in the heart of rural, revolutionary New England and many immigrant and errant birds flying in from Holiday celebrations, Southern Plantations and Back Bay Churches were pleased to help raise the transcendental offspring, often in communal manses.

The Coplandian cuckoo, a tall, lean bird with strong beak, bemused kindly eyes and a bouncy hop, chose the entire Western hemisphere as its breeding site, but not before having intuitively flown to the ancestral European Nest. For a few years Bohemian Paris offered her charm, wit and strict artistic standards. When the migratory period came to an end, this remarkably mature bird, knowing exactly what it had to do, took off for its native land, soaring high and far in search of the American Bald Eagle's elevated aerie.

			He found it, and many more -
		On the mountains and prairies,
			Appalachian Spring and Billy the Kid;
		In the towns and cities,
			Our town and Quiet City;
		In dance halls and circuses,
			El Salon Mexico and the Red Pony;
		On the battlefields and cornfields,
			Lincoln Portrait and The Tender Land,
		his operatic Hymn for the Universal Nest, our lonely Planet.

At age 70, and still rarin' to go, Aaron Copland can look down upon throbbing broods of fledglings of such liveliness, originality and personal beauty as to assure himself of a permanent perch alongside the greatest cuckoos that ever lived.

Photograph courtesy of Nils Vigeland on behalf of the Leo Smit estate.

April 2000 Music Library Staff musique@acsu.buffalo.edu http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/music/exhibits/smit/copland.html