I have "Grogh" on an Argo disc. just like the organsymphony a great accomplishment for such a young composer.
Here's the story - from:http://www.answers.com/topic/grogh-ballet-in-1-scene
This almost legendary score was known for years merely as the source from which Aaron Copland later drew his Dance Symphony. It was composed during the period Copland was studying in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. He was gripped by the Expressionist German vampire film "Nosferatu, " which he had seen in 1921 in company with the writer Harold Clurman, whom he asked to write a ballet scenario. The story concerns a sorcerer who brings corpses to life to dance for his pleasure. The macabre subject required the youthful composer to stretch his technique to strange dissonances and rhythms. The music is often very violent. Some aspects of the libretto played to Copland's strength, his Americanness, by including "visions of jazz."
Copland's youth and naivete are also evident in this work -- not in the music itself, for it is remarkably self-assured and accomplished, but in the circumstances of its creation. Simply put, a more experienced composer would not invest the time and effort without an interested ballet company or impresario, choreographer, or even a commission.
The ballet was never staged, nor played in more than its two-piano reduction for nearly seventy years. Fortunately, Copland was able to recoup his investment. He heard of a contest for a new American symphony and quickly extracted parts of the score, soon producing a three-movement work he called Dance Symphony. He won the cash prize with it. Another section had already been published separately as "Cortege funébre." A further part of it was reorchestrated and included in a later ballet, "Hear Ye, Hear Ye!" Copland revised the score of Grohg in 1932. It was then shelved, then lost.
Over fifty years later Copland's assistant Roland Caltabiano conceived the idea of reassembling Grohg from the its separated parts and approached English composer-conductor Oliver Knussen to gather the pieces and provide any needed musical stitching. In researching Copland's music of the period at the Library of Congress in Washington, Knussen discovered the full score of the 1932 version, which had been misfiled. The ballet was finally heard as Copland conceived it in 1992.
This music casts an interesting light on the early, near-radical phase of Copland's career. It is one of the very few works from his pen which seem to have sprung from an emotional well-spring. It is too early a work to have a chance at being ranked as a masterpiece; it has the brashness of youth. It is also one of the few of his pieces where ideas seem to tumble over one another in unrestrained fashion. Altogether, a remarkable accomplishment and highly recommended to the listener who is familiar with the more standard Copland fare. ~ All Music Guide
