This album showcases a selection of Ives’ shorter works for orchestra. Experiments, marches, arrangements, and enticingly incomplete fragments are included alongside the Four Ragtime Dances and Chromâtimelôdtune, one of Ives’ most startling creations. Ives specialist James Sinclair conducts. Includes seven world premiere recordings. Released to mark the 150th anniversary of Ives’s birth.

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."

Click here to listen to the Naxos podcast interview with Paul Jacobs about this release.

This release features organ concertos by some of America's finest contemporary composers: Horatio Parker's 'imposing and brilliant' piece is heard alongside Christopher Rouse's concerto of contrasting light and dark sonorities, which is dedicated to album soloist Paul Jacobs, and Wayne Oquin's Resilience reflects the human capacity for tenacity and perseverance. The program ends with Ives' Variations on 'America' for solo organ.

Celebrating the sesquicentenary of Charles Ives’ birth, New England-based pianist and Ives scholar nonpareil Donald Berman releases a recording of the composer’s “Concord Sonata” using his own newly prepared edition which reveals fresh insights into the iconic work. Berman’s immersion into Ives’ sound world began under the tutelage of pianist John Kirkpatrick who gave the New York premiere of the “Concord Sonata” in 1939. Throughout many years of study and reflection, Berman discovered numerous notes and alterations that Ives made within the Concord’s manuscript pages, each one “a step toward realising his vision for a three-dimensional auditory experience.” Berman concluded that the first movement of the Concord, as Ives imagined it, is quite different than today’s commonly accepted version; his new edition includes two pages worth of material, masterfully recorded here for the first time.

The album opens with the elegiac “The St. Gaudens (Black March)”, referring to the eponymous sculpture in the Boston Common that depicts the Massachusetts 54th, the first Union army regiment of African American soldiers, that is known widely in its orchestral version as the first movement of Ives’ Three Places in New England.

On the occasion of Cambreling's 75th birthday the label SWR Classic releases a 10-disc boxed set of recordings made by SWR between 1999 and 2011.

Sylvain Cambreling was the chief conductor of the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden and Freiburg between 1992-2016. When he took up his position at the broadcasting corporation Südwestrundfunk, he knew only too well that he was the successor to charismatic colleagues such as Hans Rosbaud, Ernest Bour, and Michael Gielen. He met with an orchestra that was young, efficient, and enthusiastic, and whose members were eager and willing to fulfill the task the broadcasting corporation had set: a strong commitment to New Music.

Cambreling was and still is enormously hard-working, curious about anything new and complex, displays a versatility that is without competition, and is a great communicator: therefore, he was the ideal cast for this orchestra and its tasks. The hymns of praise, specifically those of the foreign press, regularly (and not without envy) point out the qualities and possibilities of the orchestra and also the apparently reliable sponsorship from the broadcasting corporation. Just as reliable were the invitations from Salzburg, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Madrid, Lisbon, Lucerne, Aix-en-Provence.

After World War I, composers would cast off the moorings of the traditional European styles to create something inexorably new. This was the beginning of the American Century. The four composers featured are the pinnacle of that achievement. Schuman, Persichetti, Ives, and Copland blazed a trail into a new era of distinctly American classical music on this incredible album from the United States Navy Band Washington D.C.

Ives’ Sets for Chamber Orchestra are largely based on his songs, and display a panoply of style and technique. Set 9 includes The Unanswered Question in its original form, and this recording contains world premiere recordings of new realisations and editions, as well as being the first recording of the complete edition of the Sets. The three Orchestral Sets conducted by James Sinclair can be heard on 8.559370.

REVIEW:

The Sets for Chamber Orchestra by Charles Ives (1874–1954) are, in a sense, songs without words, based on songs whose texts are printed in the booklet. Although some sets do not have descriptive titles as others do (Three Poets and human Nature, From the Side Hill, Water Colors) most parts of the sets do have a name that describes their character. Set 9 includes The Unanswered Question in its original form.

For this recording, James Sinclair, Kenneth Singleton, and David Porter have thoroughly revised the scores and weeded out errors.

The interpretations are refined, clearly structured, and expressive. Unlike other conductors, Sinclair does not play to the fullest the aggressiveness of the compositions, but strives for a fine portrayal of the grotesque, the ironic, and the nostalgic.

-- Pizzicato (Norbert Tischer)

A fantastic collection of American choral classics ranging from Thompson’s sublime Alleluia to the terrific choral arrangement of Gershwin’s Summertime from Porgy & Bess. Conductor Robin White’s excellent arrangement of the traditional Shenandoah balances the programme nicely along with Copeland’s "I bought me a cat". This is a surprising and entertaining collection. Alban Voices is a chamber-choir formed over 20 years ago by Robin White and his late wife, Freda, originally as a relief choir for services in St. Albans Abbey. It has always been an ad-hoc grouping, drawn together as and when required: many of the current members sing regularly in London’s top symphonic choirs. Among other appearances, it featured most notably in a pivotal episode of the BBC TV soap opera EastEnders in December 2003. More recently, the group’s recording of Robin’s original Christmas song, Light of the World, accompanied by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, has been well received, and was played on Scala Radio and Classic FM in the run-up to Christmas 2022.

Robin White trained at Imperial College, London and the Royal College of Music, studying conducting with Vernon Handley and orchestration with Bryan Kelly. He has conducted open-air, pop-classics concerts at National Trust and other venues across the south-west of England and the midlands. He has also worked with leading soloists such as John Lill, Christopher Warren-Green, Alexander Baillie and Emma Johnson in concerts in Bristol and the Channel Islands. His 1992 recording of Edwardian light music for Chandos Records was played extensively on Classic FM.

“Charles Ives' America”
Written and produced by Joseph Horowitz
Visual presentation by Peter Bogdanoff
Film two in the six-film Naxos series:
“Dvorak’s Prophecy: A New Narrative for American Classical Music”

Steeped in nostalgia, in his Danbury childhood and the New England Transcendentalists with whom he profoundly identified, in the American experience of race which he absorbed from his Abolitionist grandparents, Ives used the past with consummate empathy and brave artistry. A musical Whitman or Melville, he embodies the American trope of the “self-made genius,” heeding Emerson’s call to cut the cultural umbilical cord with Europe, forging an original path. The music at hand here includes his Second Symphony (a milestone in culling the vernacular to set beside Huckleberry Finn), The Housatonic at Stockbridge (possibly the most sublime nature reverie in the American orchestral repertoire), and The St. Gaudens in Boston Common (a singular ghost dirge in tribute to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw’s Black Civil War regiment). We also hear portions of Ives’s Concord Sonata performed by Steven Mayer (an interpretation seasoned by a lifetime of advocacy) and half a dozen Ives songs peerlessly sung (in live performance with Paul Sanchez) by William Sharp. The commentators include the Ives scholar Peter Burkholder, James Sinclair, William Sharp and Judith Tick.

‘Charles Ives’ America may be the most important film ever produced about American music. Horowitz moves Ives from the fringes squarely to his position as the seminal composer of our country’ – JoAnn Falletta, Music Director, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.

Previous releases from the New York-based Escher Quartet include an acclaimed set of Mendelsohn’s six string quartets as well as an album with works by Dvorák, Tchaikovsky and Borodin. For their latest offering the members have looked closer to home, however, choosing to combine the quartets by Samuel Barber and Charles Ives. The disc opens with Barber’s String Quartet in B minor, containing the music for which the composer remains best-known: the second movement which he two years later expanded into Adagio for Strings. Recognizing its potential already while composing it, Barber described the piece as ‘a knock-out’ – which made it all the more difficult to come up with a third movement worthy to follow it. In the end he decided to make the quartet a two-movement work, but the Eschers have here included the lively third movement that the composer discarded, offering the opportunity to hear the work as it was once planned. Barber is followed by the two full-scale quartets by Charles Ives, as well as a brief Scherzo. Like many other compositions by Ives, his First Quartet makes extensive use of revival and gospel hymns, quoting them in all four movements in a highly accessible tonal idiom. Far more challenging, the Second Quartet is a portrayal of ‘four men / who converse, discuss, argue ... fight, shake hands, shut up / then walk up the mountainside to view the firmament’ – a programme which invites a liberal use of dissonance, but also – towards the end – a particularly fulfilling resolution.

REVIEW:

Here's a nifty album of American chamber music that works on several levels. The Escher String Quartet offers a crisp reading of Barber's quartet as a whole that does not overdo the sentiment in the Adagio. There are also clear readings of Charles Ives' two string quartets, one broadly tonal, one conceptual and modern. So, a good choice for listeners wanting to broaden their appreciation of Barber and Ives, but the album also has much to offer those who have thought deeply about these composers. There is also a welcome performance of one of Ives' bracingly humorous Three Pieces for String Quartet, the second piece, "Hold Your Own!" In short, there is something for almost everyone in this fine release.

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

Bill Ives has enjoyed a rich and varied career as both performer and composer (Grayston Ives). These experiences, culminating in nearly two decades as Informator Choristarum (Director of Music) at Magdalen College, Oxford, are reflected in a compositional style which is complex yet accessible, rich and colourful. His choral music comes from the heart, and this deeply personal reaction to the texts enables the performer or listener to engage with and enjoy the music to its full extent. This recording represents two ‘firsts’ for the choirs of Jesus College, Cambridge: The first time the choir have collaborated on a recording with the Britten Sinfonia, as well as is the first time both chapel and college choirs they have joined forces for an entire album. Bill (Grayston) Ives writes: “In the Requiem many influences are thrown into the musical melting pot and will be apparent to the discerning listener. Ultimately, the piece is firmly rooted in the Anglican choral tradition (written specifically for liturgical performance), the distillation of a lifetime in music ... The delicate, sweet sound of a pair of tiny hand-held cymbals is heard at the opening and at intervals throughout. They were bought at Snape Maltings from a group of Tibetan monks who were resident there during the summer of 2008 when ideas for the piece were forming.”

Of the two large piano sonatas composed by Charles Ives, No. 2 (’the Concord Sonata’) is by far the best-known, overshadowing its sibling. The First Piano Sonata is comparably ambitious, however, and with a playing time of more than 40 minutes, similarly expansive. Like many works by Ives it had a long gestation period, beginning in 1901 with additions and revisions being made well into the 1920s. In contrast to the Concord, Ives didn’t provide the work with an explicit programme, but wrote that it was ‘mostly about the outdoor life in Connecticut villages in the 1880s and 90s.’ This can to an extent explain the various borrowings from hymns, but New York City, where Ives was living, has also left a clear mark with a liberal use of ragtime rhythms. Ives composed a third ‘sonata’ for the piano, the so-called Three-Page Sonata, cast in three brief but challenging movements. The two works are both included on this recording by Joonas Ahonen, who released the Concord Sonata in 2017 to critical acclaim, with the French magazine Classica praising ‘his youthful impetuosity and technical prowess’. Ives’ sonatas frame the third work on the disc, the Austrian composer Bernhard Gander’s Peter Parker from 2004. It is the alter ego of the superhero Spider-Man that has lent his name to Gander’s highly virtuosic and original piano piece which presents a panorama of the superhero’s patterns of movement, transformed into music.

REVIEW:

The Piano Sonata No. 1, begun in 1901, represented an underappreciated breakthrough for Ives, even if he did continue to tinker with it into the 1920s. The work encompasses the polyphonic weaving of many strands of American music that would occupy Ives for much of his mature compositional life. Ahonen is a pianist with a fine feeling for Ives, catching the way he can turn on a dime from weighty matters to a kind of sly humor. The passages where many streams of life flow through the music are clear and confident, the rhythmic shifts that suffuse the music and that make up the backbone of the concluding Three-Page Sonata are crisp.

That work is joined in bringing down the curtain by composer Bernhard Gander's Peter Parker (a.k.a. Spider-Man), depicting the superhero's kinetic repertory. This is a very strong and thoroughly enjoyable Ives release.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

For their debut album on Resonus Classics, The Gould Piano Trio presents three Trios with strong American ties. Charles Ives’ (1874–1954) only Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano is one of his major works is without question. Amy Beach (1867–1944) was recognized in her lifetime as one of the most acclaimed American composers. Her Trio, Op. 150, was composed in 1938 and is steeped in the developmental processes of late nineteenth century models while quoting two Inuit folk songs. Although born and educated in England, Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979) wrote her Piano Trio as part of a chamber music competition in Pittsfield MA and has been described as the finest work in the genre by any British composer.

Charles Ives’s ‘Concord Sonata’ is often described as one of the greatest of American piano works. Published in 1920, at the composer’s own expense, it contains radical experiments in harmony and rhythm and would have to wait until 1939 for its first public performance. In the course of its four movements, Ives depicts some of the famous inhabitants of the small town of Concord in Massachusetts, a centre of the mid-19th century transcendentalism movement. Luminaries of the movement such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are alluded to in various ways in music that includes references to Beethoven, religious and patriotic hymns and circus marches, as well as brief ‘guest appearances’ by a viola and a flute. Lasting 47 minutes on the present recording, it is a massive work of a staggering complexity, and a true challenge for any performer – a challenge more than readily accepted by the young Finnish pianist Joonas Ahonen, who has previously recorded Ligeti’s piano concerto for BIS.

For the opening work on the disc, the much shorter Violin Sonata No.4, Ahonen is joined by his compatriot, the celebrated violinist Pekka Kuusisto. Composed during the same period as the Concord Sonata, this piece also has an extra-musical background, namely the composer’s memories as a child of the so-called camp meetings held during the Christian revivalism of the late 19th century.