On the 150th anniversary of the birth of Charles Ives - acclaimed by his champion Leonard Bernstein as the "first great American composer", who, "all alone in his Connecticut barn, created his own private musical revolution" - Sony Classical presents the most authoritative recording collection ever released of works by this eccentric, prophetic genius.

The 5-CD box set Charles Ives - The Anniversary Edition is a unique and provocative introduction only released previously 50 years ago on LP by Columbia Masterworks under the art direction of Henrietta Condak to celebrate Ives's centenary.

The first disc examines "The Many Faces of Charles Ives" through eight diverse works recorded between 1964 and 1970: Bernstein conducts the New York Philharmonic in The Fourth of July and The Unanswered Question; General William Booth Enters into Heaven, one of Ives's towering achievements, and The Circus Band are performed by the Gregg Smith Singers; baritone Thomas Stewart sings the moving song In Flanders Fields; organist E. Power Biggs plays Ives's Variations on "America"; composer Gunther Schuller conducts The Pond for chamber orchestra; and the Largo cantabile Hymn is performed by the New York String Quartet and double bass player Alvin Brehm. CD 2, "The Celestial Country", offers Ives's early cantata by that name, composed in 1897-99 for his conservative Yale composition teacher Horatio Parker. It is sung by the Gregg Smith Singers (accompanied by the Columbia Chamber Orchestra), who also perform arrangements of four of Ives's most powerful patriotic songs with the American Symphony Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski conducting. "The Things Our Fathers Loved", CD 3, contains 25 of Ives's songs, delivered by the soprano Helen Boatwright, who specialized in American song. She is partnered by John Kirkpatrick, who studied and worked closely with Ives and is still regarded as the most authoritative interpreter of his piano music. Gramophone in 1974 praised this famous recording as "the finest selection ever to appear" on LP of "what may well turn out to be considered his most important, characteristic and consistently inspired body of music."

He went on to head major orchestras in Dallas and Atlanta and to guest conduct leading ensembles all over the world. But before that, Louis Lane honed his craft while working in the shadow of one of the great masters: in 1947, legendary maestro George Szell chose the young, inexperienced Texan to assist him in Cleveland - "I think you will do" was the gruff maestro's verdict, exceptional praise indeed from that notorious perfectionist.

Between 1959 and 1972 - with the full Cleveland Orchestra, the somewhat smaller Cleveland Pops and the chamber-sized Cleveland Sinfonietta - Louis Lane made a series of critically acclaimed recordings for Columbia. They display the "exceptional breadth and impeccable taste" for which this gifted but perennially undervalued conductor was lauded in a tribute by the orchestra's executive director. Sony Classical is pleased to present them now - many for the first time on CD - in a new 14-disc set.

Reviewers were effusive in their praise when these albums were originally released on LP. Here is a sampling: Pop Concert U.S.A. (1959) - music by Copland, Gershwin, Bernstein and other American composers: "If only all the pops (or, for that matter, all the classics) were as good as this!. The orchestra plays splendidly" (Gramophone). On the Town with the Cleveland Pops (1960) - selections from On the Town, My Fair Lady, Oklahoma, The King and I and other Broadway musicals: "Scintillating. Under Lane's enthusiastic direction, the Clevelanders play these familiar musical comedy excerpts with such precision and virtuosity that they emerge with glistening freshness" (High Fidelity). Music from the Films (1961) - Henry V, Louisiana Story, Bridge on the River Kwai, Gigi, Exodus and other motion pictures: "This concert of music from the movies is so superior to most issues of it's kind that it calls for special commendation. Lane has coaxed some beautiful playing from the Cleveland orchestra, and the engineers have provided him with rich and glorious sound" (High Fidelity).

Sony Classical is pleased to present a special edition of Leonard Bernstein’s American Columbia recordings from the 1950s and 1960s. Some of the conductor-composer’s most celebrated interpretations and works are collected here on these carefully chosen 10 original albums on 11 CDs. 

There is, of course, the still-astonishing album that launched Leonard Bernstein’s international reputation as the most dynamic and charismatic conductor of his era, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring recorded in January 1958 – two months after his appointment as the youngest music director in the New York Philharmonic’s history. Reviewing a 2013 reissue, ClassicsToday.com declared: “It has an excitement, spontaneity, and primal fury that no other version quite matches.” 

The Bernstein recording that launched the “Mahler Renaissance” in the 1960s is also here: his Third Symphony with the New York Philharmonic, which has arguably never been surpassed. And while we’re talking about Third Symphonies, Bernstein’s “Eroica” still sounds “wonderfully vibrant” (Gramophone) a half century after its first release. There is also his reading of Dvořák’s most popular symphony – “There’s no such thing as a ‘definitive’ recording [of the “New World”], but if there were, this one would come close to that imagined ideal” (ClassicsToday) – and two from Haydn’s magnificent “Paris” set: “It’s debatable whether there have been better performances” (ClassicalNet).  

Bernstein himself conducts and plays Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (“The one indispensable recording of this familiar work, paired with an equally fine American in Paris” – New York Times). Bernstein the pianist also accompanies Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, at the peak of his matchless career, in an acclaimed album of Mahler lieder. The ballets Rodeo and Billy the Kid by Bernstein’s mentor and friend Aaron Copland are included: “Even the composer couldn't make [them] dance the way Bernstein does” (New York Times).  

Bernstein the composer is also generously represented. The original Broadway cast recording of Candide from 1956 is included, as is the definitive version of his most famous work: the original Broadway cast recording of West Side Story from 1957. 

The re-masterings in this new collection are the best ever issued of these thrilling recordings by one of the last century’s greatest musicians, selected from the Grammy® award-winning Leonard Bernstein – The Composer and the Leonard Bernstein – Remastered editions. Sony Classical’s new 11-CD Leonard Bernstein box set is the perfect introduction to the work of this American genius.

Past praise of previously released recordings included in this set:

Mahler: Symphony No. 3 / Lipton, Bernstein, NYP

This was the finest performance of Mahler’s Third when it was first issued back in 1962, and in some ways it has never been surpassed. Bernstein catches the riotous vulgarity of the first movement march music like no other conductor–not even his own digital remake reaches the level of sheer abandon he whips up here, and he also has the best of all fifth movements (bright and cheery, with dazzlingly prominent percussion).

-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Hurwitz)

Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 / Bernstein, NYP

There’s no such thing as a “definitive” recording, but if there were, this one would come close to that imagined ideal. Its special qualities haven’t dimmed a bit in decades since it was recorded, and every interpretive decision comes across with the inevitability of fate itself. First, you get the first-movement exposition repeat (very unusual for its time), then there’s the very slow (but still very flowing) Largo, gorgeously played and far from the trudge-fest that Bernstein would make of for DG. The scherzo goes like the wind, the fastest ever, and the finale offers simply the last word in excitement. If you don’t own this performance in some form, then you don’t know the “New World”.

-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Hurwitz)

After many acclaimed releases on BIS, most recently ‘Sounds and Sweet Airs – A Shakespeare Songbook’ (BIS-2653), Carolyn Sampson’s latest recital with Joseph Middleton lives up to its name: it is an eloquent testimony to the English soprano’s love of her art. This programme artfully blends well-known and lesser-known lieder by German and Austrian masters such as Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Richard Strauss and Hugo Wolf with French songs by Gounod, Poulenc and Franck, as well as works by Anglo-Saxon composers such as Hubert Parry, Samuel Barber and Ivor Gurney. Female composers are not forgotten, with rarely-performed songs by Rita Strohl based on slightly risqué poems by Pierre Louÿs, music by Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Kaija Saariaho – who has recently passed away – and Deborah Pritchard, whose song presented here was composed especially for Sampson. And while Leonard Bernstein’s comically cheeky song ‘I hate music’, appears to be a call not to let music take itself too seriously, Errollyn Wallen’s ‘Peace on Earth’, which concludes the album, invokes calm and encourages us to find peace, a message that seems more relevant today than ever.

This CD is devoted to some of the most significant pieces for trumpet and piano, a formation that was born, literally, at the beginning of the last century. No prominent nineteenth–century composer has left us chamber pieces, let alone duo pieces, that involve the solo use of the trumpet; and it might be worth briefly questioning the reasons for the instrument’s nearly total absence from the repertoire. With this Album With this publication we will try to identify the reasons and to dis-cover some of the most evocative passages dedicated to it.

The Pacific Quintet have gone beyond the standard classical repertoire and have selected pieces that represent their diversity. Its musicians were born and raised all over the globe — Japan, Honduras, South Korea, Germany, and Ukraine/Turkey — and here present music from their home countries, transcending all differences of culture, language, and tradition. Two pieces, one by the Honduran composer Jorge Santos and the other by the South Korean female composer Soeui Lee, were commissioned especially for this album, which also includes Fazil Say’s quintet Alevi dedeler raki masasinda and a medley of Japanese folk songs; Hanns Eisler’s Divertimento represents Germany, the Pacific Quintet’s home base. The album ends with an arrangement of music from West Side Story and pays homage to Leonard Bernstein, the founder of the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo where the players first met. As this project shows, they are truly United in music.

Leonard Bernstein conducted regularly in Munich from the 1980s onwards. It was during this time that he came to appreciate and love the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in particular. In October 1976, Bernstein had appeared with an all-Beethoven program, and in 1983 he began a series of annual concerts with the orchestra. In 1987, he rehearsed Franz Schubert's Great C Major Symphony, which was performed in the Congress Hall of the Deutsches Museum in Munich. This BR-KLASSIK CD features not only the live recording of this concert event but also a rehearsal recording on a bonus CD, "Conductors in Rehearsal," which has been preserved in the sound archives of Bavarian Radio. Bernstein's warmth and friendliness, as well as his astonishingly good German, are most impressive.

Franz Schubert most probably composed his Great C Major Symphony in Bad Gastein in the summer of 1825. Chronologically speaking, it is his eighth symphony, although it is still sometimes referred to as his ninth. It can be assumed that Schubert, who had witnessed the first performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Vienna in 1824, wanted to be on an artistic level with his much older colleague. He dedicated his work to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, in whose archives the score can be traced back to the end of 1826. However, it was not until 1839—after Schubert's death—that the history of its performance began, after Robert Schumann became aware of the work and organized its publication. In 1840, after the posthumous first performance by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy on March 21, 1839, Schumann formulated one of the most famous quotations about Schubert’s symphony, that of its "heavenly length." Because of the value the composer himself attached to it, and to distinguish it from the much shorter Sixth Symphony in the same key (therefore often referred to as the "Little C Major"), it was titled "The Great.

"The live recording was made on June 13 and 14, 1987, in the Congress Hall of the Deutsches Museum in Munich. In the rehearsal recording “Conductors in Rehearsal – Leonard Bernstein Rehearses with the BRSO in German,” Friedrich Schloffer (narrator) and Johannes Ritzkowsky (horn) can be heard alongside Bernstein.