“Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait" at the Orpheum Theatre -- September 27.
Saturday, September 27, 7 p.m.
Orpheum Theatre, 57 South Kellogg Street, Galesburg IL
In their powerful tribute to American spirit and local legacy, the Knox-Galesburg Symphony will open their 2025-26 season with a powerful performance of Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait at Galesburg's Orpheum Theatre, the September 27 concert event presented under the direction of Richard Cangro, and featuring actor Steven Duchrow portraying Carl Sandburg as narrator – a nod to Sandburg’s Grammy-winning 1960 performance.
Lincoln Portrait is a 1942 classical orchestral work written by the American composer Aaron Copland. The work involves a full orchestra, with particular emphasis on the brass section at climactic moments, and is narrated with the reading of excerpts of Abraham Lincoln's great documents, including the Gettysburg Address. The work originated after conductor Andre Kostelanetz commissioned Copland to write a musical portrait of an "eminent American" for the New York Philharmonic. Copland chose President Abraham Lincoln, and used material from speeches and letters of Lincoln, as well as original folk songs of the period, including "Camptown Races" and "On Springfield Mountain". Copland finished Lincoln Portrait in April 1942, and its first performance was by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in May of 1942, with William Adams as the narrator. Because of his leftist views, however, Copland was eventually blacklisted, and Lincoln Portrait was withdrawn from the 1953 inaugural concert for Dwight D. Eisenhower.
As included at the Los Angeles' Philharmonic's LAPhil.com, site, the following note was written by Copland for the first Boston Symphony performance in 1943: "The first sketches were made in February, and the portrait finished on 16 April 1942. I worked with musical materials of my own with the exception of two songs of the period: the famous 'Camptown Races' which, when used by Lincoln supporters during his Presidential campaign of 1860, was sung to the words, 'We're bound to work all night, bound to work all day. I'll bet my money on the Lincoln hoss…,' and a ballad that was first published in 1840 under the title 'The Pesky Sarpent,' but it is better known today as 'Springfield Mountain.' In neither case is the treatment a literal one. The tunes are used freely in the manner of my use of cowboy songs in Billy the Kid.
"The composition is roughly divided into three main sections. In the opening section I wanted to suggest something of the mysterious sense of fatality that surrounds Lincoln's personality. Also, near the end of that section, something of his gentleness and simplicity of spirit. The quick middle section briefly sketches in the background of the times he lived. This merges into the concluding section where my sole purpose was to draw a simple but impressive frame about the words of Lincoln himself."
In addition to Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait, the September 27 concert event at the Orpheum Theatre will find the Knox-Galesburg Symphony performing Copland’s stirring Fanfare for the Common Man, Samuel Barber’s deeply moving Adagio for Strings, and George Gershwin’s vibrant An American in Paris. Admission to the 7:30 p.m. performance is $6-36.20, and more information and tickets are available by calling (309)342-2299 and visiting GalesburgOrpheum.org.
