was the right place for the people and the occasion—indeed the only one properly related to them. It sounds a good deal like certain aspects of the building—big, spacious, clear, long-lined, and it sounds very like you ... To those familiar with your music, the characteristic, identifying moods are perfectly apparent. The special Copland eloquence is there." Critics A few critics were positive. Louis Biancolli wrote in The New York Telegram that the work was "a turning point in [Copland's] career, a powerful score in 12-tone style that has liberated new stores of creative energy." John Molleson write for the New York Herald Tribune that while the new piece was "a difficult work and like most music difficult to understand at one hearing ... this piece has flesh where others have only skin, and there was a good deal of arresting lyricism." Others, however, dismissed Connotations: Everett Helm thought it "unnecessarily strident," Harriet Johnson "too long for its content" and Richard Franko Johnson "completely without charm." Telecast The concert was telecast live by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) to an audience of 26 million viewers. As part of its program, NBC asked Copland to talk to the television audience about Connotations. While the cameras alternated between shots of the composer and the manuscript score, Copland said, "It seems to me that there are two things you can do when listening to any new work. The most important thing is to lend yourself—or to put it another way—try to be as sensitive as you can to the overall feeling the new piece gives off. The second way is to listen with some awareness of the general shape of the new piece, realizing that a composer works with his musical materials just as an architect works with his building materials in order to construct an edifice that makes sense." He then discussed the work briefly but in some detail. To Copland's surprise, his lecture was taken as an apologia, not an explanation, by the majority of the television audience. Moreover, vehement letters poured into NBC after the broadcast from across the United States. One read, "If last night is any criterion of what can be expected in Lincoln Center, it should be called 'Center of Jungle Culture.'" Another read, "Dear Mr. Copland, Shame Shame Shame!" European tour and first recording Bernstein conducted Connotations again during the first week of regular Philharmonic concerts