in 1963 and included it among the pieces the orchestra played on its European tour that February. Despite the composer's claim in Copland Since 1943 that "The European premiere was more successful than the New York reception," reviews about Connotations remained mainly negative; comments abounded about "mere din" and "dodecaphonic deserts." When the London audience gave the work a lengthy ovation, Bernstein responded that he would conduct another Copland work as an encore. When cries of "Oh, oh" ensued, he added, "But this will be in a different style." He then conducted "Hoe-Down" from the ballet Rodeo. A release of the New York performance by Columbia Records fared no better. Robert Marsh found the music "dreary" and "dull." Irving Kolodin called it "rather relentlessly grim." Everett Helm, who had been able to hear the work live before he sampled the recording, wrote, "Connotations for Orchestra sounded rather strident on September 23; on the disc it becomes ear-piercing." Bernstein rerecorded Connotations with the New York Philharmonic for Columbia in 1973. This recording was released with Copland's Inscape and Carter's Concerto for Orchestra. Other factors in initial failure The composer admitted that Connotations possessed "a rather severe and somewhat intellectual tone." However, while he did not expect it to be an immediate success, he had still hoped that the music's intensity and drama might lend it some appeal. While Copland maintained that "It bothers me not at all to realize that my range as a composer includes both accessible and problematic works," composer and musicologist Peter Dickinson notes "a tone of defensiveness" in this remark. Nevertheless, Connotations''' abrasiveness to many listeners might not have been the only factor in its initial failure. Bernstein The negative initial reaction to Connotations has also been claimed to have been due to Bernstein's conducting. Bernstein was especially antipathetic toward works that were atonal or rhythmically disjunctive and "could not overcome a deep-seated antipathy, an almost gut reaction" against them. Of the contemporary composers with whom he could relate, he had been "generous and enthusiastic" in his support of Copland. His frequent programming of Copland's works during his tenure with the New York Philharmonic might, Adams suggests, have been partly in reaction against works of the twelve-tone school. Now he was confronted with what American composer John Adams terms a "stridently dissonant, piss-n-vinegar" work "written in an idiom so alien to his own sensibilities," the first performance