Clarinet Concerto

Benny Goodman commissioned the concerto in 1947 for two thousand dollars and exclusive performing rights for two years; Copland worked on it partly in Rio de Janeiro and finished in 1948. Goodman found the ending unplayable and Copland rewrote it. The premiere came only on 6 November 1950, in an NBC radio broadcast with Fritz Reiner conducting. The two movements are joined by an unaccompanied cadenza — the first slow and songlike, the second built on a Brazilian tune Copland had heard and on jazz figures. Jerome Robbins choreographed it in 1951 as The Pied Piper.