Charles Ives 150 (1874-1954)

“In case I don’t get to finishing this, somebody might like to try to work out the idea, and the sketch that I’ve already done would make more sense to anybody looking at it with this explanation.” (Charles Ives)

Inspired by these enticing words, director Christoph Marthaler, conductor Titus Engel, and stage designer Anna Viebrock developed their own highly individual take on an unfinished project by the American composer Charles Ives: the Universe Symphony, one of the great utopian works of the 20th century. Based on the musical work initially intended for 4250 musicians, the stage production Universe, Incomplete, mounted at the Ruhrtriennale 2018, incorporates elements and music from Charles Ives’ entire oeuvre. The production is complemented by the documentary film The Unanswered Ives, which takes the viewer back to the composer’s hometown in Danbury, Connecticut and retraces Ives’ New England heritage. Presented like a collage, the film reveals a man who was far ahead of his time – a solitary radical in music and pioneer in polytonal harmony and multiple rhythms who was able to draw from the rich tradition of American music.

REVIEW:

A performance from the Ruhrtriennale 2018 on the one and a film about the composer Charles Ives on the other DVD present the incomplete universe of the unanswered Ives. The performance is based on fragments of the Universe Symphony. Ives planned a happening in a mountainous landscape with more than 4,000 participants, to which the audience would wander during the performance. From these fragments, the two longest parts were combined with other early works by Ives into a two-hour event. The quite spacious Jahrhunderthalle in Bochum virtually replaces the mountains. The result is a performance that is at first glance as inexplicable as it is fascinating. The performers move back and forth between reality and dream and tell a compelling story that shows both the complicated and the deterrent as well as the folk-related aspect of the composer Ives.

In the almost one-hour film The Unanswered Ives musical recordings as well as statements from musicians and residents from Ives’ birthplace in Danbury, Connecticut, give in brief sketches a friendly but not exaggerated look at this enfant terrible of the US American music scene.

– Pizzicato

In a very literal sense there is never a dull moment...the utter chaos let loose in the orchestra is, by any reckoning, tremendous fun...Stokowski, who directed the symphony's first performance, also directs the new one with an obvious sense of dedication...The recording is splendid and it is very good to see one further act of justice done towards a composer who has been so shockingly neglected in the past.

Charles Ives was not alone among members of the human race in being exercised about the purpose of life, nor alone among composers in thinking such an enquiry a fit subject for music. But he must surely have been alone in writing music quite like this to pursue the point. In a very literal sense there is never a dull moment. Indeed the proliferation of things happening is such that there is hardly ever time for any one possible answer to the basic inquiry to be expounded with conviction.

The inquiry itself is identified in (Part) I, a short Prelude in which Ives Sets for a chorus the hymn "Watchman, tell us of the night". The chorus is small, in size and contribution; the major part, here and elsewhere, is played by an enormous orchestra and a chamber group of solo violins, viola, and harp whose special repertoire seems to be based on "Nearer, My God, to Thee".

With (Part) II comes the first of Ives's answers, though just what the answer is might be thought to be in some doubt; there are episodes stated to be Pilgrims' Hymns, but these are short compared with the flood of orchestral sound unleashed on various avant-garde technicalities and on the performance, often simultaneous, of half-a-dozen tunes ranging from "Turkey in the Straw" to "Columbia the Gem of the Ocean". If II's answer is a double fugue, with more hymns for the subjects: "From Greenland's icy mount" and "All hail the power". The music itself will be familiar to listeners who own the Vox record of some eighteen months ago coupling the two Ives string quartets, for it is a large orchestral transcription of the first movement of "A Revival Meeting", the first of those quartets.

The fourth and last movement of the symphony is, Ives himself explains, "an apotheosis of the preceding content, in terms that have something to do with the reality of existence and its religious experience". Nevertheless the utter chaos let loose in the orchestra is, by any reckoning, tremendous fun.

Many American critics have also hailed it as great music (though written in 1916 the symphony had to wait for performance until 1965); and no doubt there will be English critics who share this view. I am not, alas, among them; but I am very glad to have had the opportunity of hearing and enjoying such a glorious technicolored feast of hokum. The technical experiments, whether chaotic in result or no, must often have involved extreme difficulties in performance, and three conductors and a very large and skilled body of performers have bent enormous efforts towards producing this sumptuous result. Stokowski, who directed the symphony's first performance, also directs the new one with an obvious sense of dedication. The recording is splendid, especially in stereo; and it is very good to see one further act of justice done towards a composer who has been so shockingly neglected in the past.

- Gramophone, [July, 1966] - Review of the premiere recording reissued on this CD.

These classic recordings of the Ives Quartets, as far as I know, have not been issued on CD before now. In the 1960s the Juilliard Quartet had few rivals in this repertoire and their performances set standards for those to come. I should note here that Raphael Hillyer, the original violist with the quartet, died very recently at the ripe age of 96. These recordings of the Ives quartets have not lost any of their luster. They are marvelous performances in excellent sound.

The String Quartet No. 1 was the composer’s first major work. Although he wrote it as early as 1896, it did not receive its first public performance until 1957, three years after Ives’ death. This is listener-friendly Ives, filled with snatches of hymns and other familiar tunes and not knotty as his later works, including the String Quartet No. 2, were to become. Although it is unmistakably Ives, it also sounds at times like Brahms and Dvo?ák. The work’s fugal first movement has an interesting history. Apparently Ives decided to detach it from the quartet and use it as the third movement of his Symphony No. 4, where it remains today. However, when the quartet was first published in1961 the first movement returned to its proper place. The quartet has been performed in this four-movement form ever since. According to David Johnson, who wrote the original liner notes, Ives gave the four movements of the quartet, often subtitled, “A Revival Service,” the following “churchly titles”: Fugue,Prelude,Offertory and Postlude. The printed score, though, eliminates these and gives only the tempo markings.

The Quartet No. 2 shows an entirely different side of Charles Ives. Whereas the earlier work was highly melodic and Romantic, the Second Quartet is more aggressively modern-dissonant and largely atonal. It also contains snatches of songs, such as Dixie and Columbia the Gem of the Ocean, and no little humor. Near the end of the second movement, the quartet stops to tune up before closing with two crashing chords. At one point in this movement there is a brief quotation from the Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Ives retained titles for the three movements: I-Discussions (Andante moderato), II-Arguments (Allegro con spirito), and III-The Call of the Mountains (Adagio). The quartet is also programmatic. Ives wrote the following after the work’s title: “…four men-who converse, discuss, argue, fight, shake hands, shut up-then walk up to the mountain side to view the firmament!”

These being two of Ives’ most important chamber works, it is strange that they have not been recorded more often-especially compared to the songs and symphonies. Of more modern recordings, the one that most closely approaches the benchmark the Juilliard has provided is that by what many consider today’s leading American quartet, the Emersons. Their recording on DG also contains a very brief Scherzo, called “Holding Your Own,” that Ives composed in 1903-04, and Samuel Barber’s String Quartet, Op. 11 containing the original version of his famous Adagio. Those performances are perfectly fine as a whole, even if they do not quite possess the dramatic edge or the nuances of the Juilliard. The main advantage of the Emerson disc is that it contains over an hour of music very well played and recorded. That said, the re-mastering for CD of the Juilliard recording is very successful and the sound is as good as that for the Emerson. I have not heard the accounts by the Blair Quartet on Naxos, but they have received positive reviews as well, including Dominy Clements' review on this website. You pays your money and takes your choice! The notes for the Juilliard CD are from the original LP and the presentation is first class in every way.

-- Leslie Wright, MusicWeb International

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There are several other fine recordings of these two remarkable quartets--not nearly as many as there should be--and they all include additional works that may entice some listeners to choose their fuller programs over this 49-minute recital. But that would be a mistake, for these performances by the Juilliard Quartet are exceptional in their refinement and detail, their vibrant ensemble character, and, especially in the First quartet, their respectful attention to Ives' thematic material, never artificially punching up the spontaneous hymn-tune bits nor overworking the more integrated developmental passages.

The very articulate playing allows unusual but essential clarity among the four parts, and the group's Ivesian sensibility appreciates the background programmatic concept of "A Revival Service" (First quartet) and the underlying "story" of the Second quartet's four men "who converse, discuss, argue, fight, shake hands, shut up--then walk up the mountainside to view the firmament!", but always celebrates each work's most compelling musical attributes.

Although the First quartet was written in 1896, not untypically for Ives' music its premiere wasn't until many decades later--in 1957. The Juilliard's recording followed only nine years after, in 1966--the Second quartet was recorded the following year. But there's a dynamism and freshness in the playing--complemented by sound that's just slightly dry enough to give the strings a nice vibrant edge--that surpasses all subsequent readings on disc.

The Emerson Quartet renditions (DG) are not only often faster, but the interpretations have an overtly academic character in the all-too-conspicuous articulation and phrasing. The Lydian Quartet's (Centaur) fine enough performances are dulled just a bit by the acoustic; the Blair Quartet's (Naxos) readings are very good, the best of the modern recordings of these two unique--and extremely different quartets. But whether you already have or eventually want more than one version, the Juilliard's Ives should not be missed.

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

*** This title is a reissue of a Japanese release with liner notes in Japanese. ***

I have listened to this disc time and time again and have derived much pleasure from its professionalism, its technical prowess but, above all, the obvious joy of the performers when playing the music of arguably America's greatest musical hero.

I have to confess to being slightly apprehensive about reviewing this disc. As a long-time admirer of Charles Ives’ music and being less than intimately familiar with the work of ‘The President’s Own’ United States Marine Band, I was not sure how well some of this complex music would come across. My concerns were almost immediately dispelled with the rousing, no-holds-barred rendition of the Variations on ‘America’. Billed in the excellent CD notes by Jonathan Elkus as ‘Transcribed by William E. Rhoads from William Schuman’s orchestration of E. Power Biggs’ edition of Ives’ variations for organ’, this version of Ives’ early mini-masterpiece works very convincingly. The sound is warm, yet detailed and well balanced, with a wonderfully sonorous bass drum which is evident throughout the CD.

This collection might appear as a string of arrangements but this is a confusing area with Ives. Many of Ives’ works were left in sketched or fragmentary forms and people like James Sinclair and Kenneth Singleton have had to make musical judgements as to the maverick composer’s intentions. Sinclair’s realisations of many of Ives’ works were painstakingly and lovingly done and several of them were given orchestral arrangements. Orchestral transcriptions of the Country Band March, the Circus Band March and the Overture and March ‘1776’ have appeared on James Sinclair’s own recordings with the Orchestra New England (Koch 3-7025-2) and the Northern Sinfonia (Naxos 8.559087 - see review). However, given that Ives was so inspired by the various bands in his native Danbury in Connecticut, perhaps the realisations on this disc might be closer to the sounds Ives would have had in his head. Is it not unreasonable to envision that such rumbustious works as these would have had the sound of the military band in Ives’ imagination?

The Country Band March and the Overture and March ‘1776’ both have a degree of polyrhythmic and polytonal complexity. After the relatively straightforward language of the Variations on ‘America’, I was looking forward to hearing these performances. I’m not sure how often the ‘President’s Own’ United States Marine Band is required to play this type of music but they acquit themselves with great aplomb. Being able to compare them with other recordings by more ‘traditional’ forces, I can say that the band is fully up to the task and, I’m sure, produces the sorts of sounds that the bands of New England which so inspired Ives to write this music would have had. However, on occasion the lack of a wide range of timbral differentiation such as one would get in an orchestra including strings - there are none here, save for one or more double basses bolstering the bottom line – does mean that some of the individual voices in the more complex sections can be masked. This is evident, for example, near the end of the Country Band march where some of the quotations are more easily discernable in the orchestral version. I also missed the often all-so-important piano parts, arranged out of these versions. Some of this music will be familiar to some listeners; a conflation of 1776 and Country Band later became Putnam’s Camp – the middle movement of Three Places in New England.

Some of these pieces were clearly always intended as band works – the marches Intercollegiate and Omega lambda chi and the Variations on ‘Jerusalem the Golden’ were clearly sketched out as pieces for band and were merely skilfully arranged by Keith Brion for larger forces for this recording. Much of the music on this disc comes from early in Ives’ career and provides a fascinating glimpse into his development as a renegade composer of some of the craziest and most complex music committed to paper. If one piece on this CD didn’t really work for me it was the arrangement of Decoration Day from the Holidays Symphony. I’m not sure why Jonathan Elkus arranged it but it is here – in what is so obviously an orchestral piece – where one is most conscious of the music having been ‘arranged’. That having been said, the transcription is ingenious, such as where the glissando chords, so effective on strings in the original orchestral version, are very effectively imitated by the woodwinds at 4:01. Of course, the central marching band section works admirably!

Much is made in the booklet notes of the links between Charles Ives and his slightly older contemporary John Philip Sousa. In the music as it is presented here, one can clearly see that these two composers shared a heritage and a vision for American music. Although their paths diverged a great deal later on in their careers, some of the music here shows that, in the early years at least, Charles Ives was not so far away.

Reading the credits for this disc, it was obvious that this recording was done very much ‘in house’ – recording, editing, mastering and production all being done by Marine personnel. I have listened to this disc time and time again and have derived much pleasure from its professionalism, its technical prowess but, above all, the obvious joy of the performers when playing the music of arguably America’s greatest musical hero. In short, this CD is a lot of fun and I thoroughly enjoyed being converted to the United States Marine Band’s way of making music.

-- Derek Warby, MusicWeb International

Among musicians closely associated with Charles Ives and his music, John Kirkpatrick possessed an innate affinity for the composer’s rough and tumble sound world that bordered on clairvoyance. A brilliant and adventurous pianist, Kirkpatrick (1905-1991) gave the complete public premiere of Ives’ “Concord” Sonata in 1938, followed six years later by its first recording. Kirkpatrick remade the work in stereo for Columbia Masterworks in 1968, and its first CD release here sounds better than ever.

The lean, slightly astringent sonority I remember from my well-worn LP copy gains color and tonal heft via digital remastering, with no compromise in regard to the composer’s considerable dynamic range. Kirkpatrick shapes the first two movements’ gnarly, restless keyboard writing with bracing energy and a near-infallible sense of the music’s quirky ebb and flow. The dissonant outbursts, lyrical asides, and wacky popular song quotations emerge with such idiomatic rightness and effortless transitions that it almost seems as if Kirkpatrick is making up the sonata on the spot. He is not, of course, but astute listeners will notice small textual variants based on source material that appeared only after the composer’s death, and the absence of the optional viola and flute parts.

A selection of Ives’ own private piano recordings fills out the disc, and features the composer improvising variants and new material based on the Emerson and Hawthorne movements, along with a straighter yet no less fervent reading of the complete Alcotts movement. While it’s instructive to sample Ives’ “Concord”-based piano recordings as an adjunct to Kirkpatrick’s performance, you also can find them in CRI/New World’s collection of the complete recordings of Ives at the piano. Had I produced this reissue, I would have gone so far as to add Kirkpatrick’s earlier and even more incisive 1945 “Concord”, together with the never-before-reissued “In the Inn” from the First Sonata that filled out Side 10 of the original five-disc 78 rpm album. Still, Sony/BMG and Arkivmusic.com deserve thanks for restoring Kirkpatrick’s stereo “Concord”, a performance that fully deserves its iconic reputation.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Charles Ives’s oeuvre is just as extensive as it is enigmatic. If “The Unanswered Question” and “Central Park in the Dark” have achieved something like cult status, his chamber music and songs are practically unknown. The Ensemble Avantgarde and the soprano Julia Sophie Wagner set out on a journey of discovery to a composer who was far ahead of his times. Almost the same age as Arnold Schönberg, Ives was artistically isolated. Four years of composition lessons with Horatio Parker at Yale clearly left much less of an impression than his boyhood years with his father George Edward, who was an enthusiastic experimenter. As army bandmaster the elder Ives once had several marching bands march into the marketplace of Danbury from various directions – each playing different marches, of course. This seemingly cacophonous alliance of otherwise unrelated parts would also repeatedly be found in the compositions of the younger Ives. For example, in “Old Home Day,” in which a piccolo suddenly joins a somewhat classical song, evidently without having agreed on repertoire and the key. Ives didn’t need to have any concerns – at least financial ones – about the acceptance of his music. With his own insurance company he became very rich. “Why do you write so much that no one ever gets to see? There are many good reasons, but none worth mentioning,” Ives says in the epilogue to his self-published song collection. Many of Ives’s works are available in various versions and instrumentations. The dreamy “Remembrance” can be found in three versions on this album which is both top-class and original. From very romantic (as in “Feldeinsamkeit”) to popular music (“Circus Band”): in Ives we find everything – and sometimes everything at one and the same time.

Charles Ives 150 (1874-1954)

REVIEW:

Of all the composers on whom modern musicology is inflicting its current "completion mania", the cause of Ives makes more sense than most. His manuscripts were a mess, his decision-making random, and much of his music consists of "works in progress". He was working on a Third Set for orchestra in the late 1920s when he gave up composing, and with the exception of the last movement--that at 12 minutes lasts way too long--this collaboration between David Gray Porter and Nors Josephson comes across as pretty convincing. Certainly this is true of Porter's reconstruction of the first two movements (of three).

James Sinclair conducts Ives with unflagging confidence and expertise. He uses the first version (1914) of Three Places in New England--less angular than the chamber orchestral revision, with its prominent piano part--and the result sounds markedly less radical, more "late Romantic", and that's a refreshing change. Now that the shock value of Ives has largely worn off, we need to be able to experience his works simply as good music, and Sinclair makes that case here, as he also does in the Second Set. This neglected piece is every bit as fine as the more popular Three Places, and it deserves as much attention. Warmly detailed engineering keeps the often dense textures clear, and the Malmö orchestra plays with an easy naturalness that goes hand in hand with Sinclair's sure guidance.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

A momentous release, as Morlot and the Seattle Symphony follow their acclaimed recording of Ives’ Symphony No. 2 with the next installment that includes four of the composer’s greatest works. The rarely recorded Symphony No. 4 is a haunting summation of American musical styles, and one of the masterpieces of American music. It receives here a live performance of staggering authority and eloquence that brings Ives’ multi-layered sonic canvas to new life. Recorded alongside Symphony No. 3 and Ives’ two most beloved short orchestral works, this release is engineered to audiophile standards and set to be an authoritative voice among recordings of Ives’ discography.

REVIEW:

These live performances are outstanding, and the coupling gives you what is basically “the essential Ives” orchestral music. The Fourth Symphony is a tricky piece, particularly in its second and fourth movements, whose chaotic climaxes need to ride that border between riotous, tuneful abundance and mere noise. Morlot gets it, and the orchestra provides a lean, clear sonority that convinces you that something meaningful is happening down there underneath the welter of sound. Only the “simple” third movement might raise an eyebrow, with it’s extremely quick tempo, but the phrasing helps to make the approach more convincing than you might at first believe.

The two short pieces, The Unanswered Question and Central Park in the Dark, belong together, but seldom get presented that way. It’s great to have the opportunity to hear them in their proper sequence. Finally, Morlot offers a very attractive, flowing account of the Third Symphony, with textures keenly observed in order to provide this gentle music with the maximum amount of color. It’s all very well recorded before a quiet and attentive audience. The sonics do lack the richness of, say, Litton on Hyperion, my versions of reference, but this is by any standard awfully good.

-- ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

Eugene Ormandy's peerless Ives First Symphony, a singular classic in which the conductor employs all the resources of his fabulous orchestra, comes newly packaged in Sony's latest re-launch of its highly successful budget-priced Essential Classics series. The famous Philadelphia strings make a wonderfully sumptuous sound (particularly as they flesh out the Adagio molto's beauteous melodies), the winds' pointed and colorful playing enlivens the scherzo, while the brass section's signature timbre rings regally at the close of the first and last movements. Ormandy brings to this music the same level of concentration and care he would a Tchaikovsky symphony, conducting with an authority unmatched on other, later recordings.


Zubin Mehta conducts with similar enthusiasm, but his Los Angeles recording is spoiled by disfiguring cuts in the finale, and despite heftily sonorous playing from the Chicago Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas' earnest reading sounds surprisingly stiff after Ormandy's free-flowing, almost impetuous rendition. Ormandy further earns his Ives stripes (and proves the lie to the claim that he was a bland interpreter) with his intense and atmospheric reading of Three Places in New England. Rounding out the program is a bracing performance of the Robert Browning Overture by a very animated Leopold Stokowski, stunningly played by the American Symphony. The remastered sound for the Philadelphia sessions is pleasingly warm and full for its period (late 1950s), while the Stokowski recording is less open and a bit hard-edged. [3/6/2002]
--Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com

Ives: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3

Charles Ives 150 (1874-1954)

Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony release here their third disc featuring the music of Charles Ives. One of his most beloved works, Three Places in New England, is meticulously mastered to capture the nuances of Ives’ intricate musical language. Recorded alongside his Orchestral Set No. 2 and New England Holidays, this release takes you on a haunting journey through Ives’ nostalgic visions of America at the turn of the century. With naturalistic imaging, depth of field and dynamic range, all Seattle Symphony Media recordings have been engineered to audiophile standards and aim to capture as realistically as possible the sound of the orchestra performing on the Benaroya Hall stage.

The Seattle Symphony is one of America’s leading symphony orchestras and is internationally acclaimed for its innovative programming and extensive recording history. Under the leadership of Music Director Ludovic Morlot since September 2011, the Symphony is heard from September through July by more than 500,000 people through live performances and radio broadcasts. It performs in one of the finest modern concert halls in the world in downtown Seattle. Its extensive education and community engagement programs reach over 65,000 children and adults each year.

REVIEW:

Ives’s mature works are always a challenge, and the Seattle Symphony rises to the occasion. This is their third Ives program, a daunting and brave undertaking. Ives’s hyper-complex skein of sound is impossible to fully sort out, but the Seattle players clarify much of it, from the eerily quiet piano solos to the massive multi-ensemble explosions.

I am particularly taken with the quiet sections, and there are many in this program. Morlot brings out the surreal poetry with loving care. The spooky, ecstatic atmosphere in Housatonic at Stockbridge is beguiling; listen to those swirling strings and burnished brass. The fade-out after the shattering climax is pure goosebumps.

So is all of Elegy to Our Forefathers, where the many layers emerge clearly from an Ivesian mist. The bells and harp envelop the listener, thanks to the intimate recording, which puts us in the middle of the orchestra. From Hanover Square North, with its ethereal chorus and mellow horn, has a ghost-like richness—a paradox that makes this recording stand out.

Ives’s big epiphany was the converging marching bands he heard on a sports field, depicted with Proustian nostalgia in Decoration Day; here the effect is natural and musical, not merely raucous. The distant trumpet is elegant and poised, and the clashing marching bands sound as if they are having a good time. This is a gentler version than the dramatic one by Michael Tilson Thomas, another outstanding Ivesian. Morlot emphasizes warmth rather than brilliance—a welcome approach in the pile-ups where all hell breaks loose on a dozen levels. Like his idols, Emerson and Thoreau, Ives could be contemplative as well as contentious, a quality Morlot obviously appreciates.

-- American Record Guide

The Emerson Concerto, a reconstruction by David G. Porter from Ives' "developed draft", gets top billing here, but it's the First Symphony that comes as the real revelation. In conversation with the present writer, conductor and Ives scholar James Sinclair offered the opinion that the reason Ives didn't finish the Emerson as a piano concerto was largely practical: he didn't trust himself as piano soloist, and no one else would have touched the piece in the first decade of the last century when he wrote it. Of course, both Ives and Sinclair were right, and much of the material for the concerto found its way into the Concord Sonata, and happily so.

While I am hardly in a position to judge Porter's work regarding its faithfulness to Ives' intentions (inasmuch as they can be determined), the piece strikes me as thick, clunky, episodic, and slow moving, lacking that typically Ivesian energy and abandon. It sounds more like Carl Ruggles, though with less of both polish and purpose. The important question in evaluating any effort such as this is whether or not it tells us anything really new or essential about the composer. As an interim stage on the way to that certified masterpiece, the Concord Sonata, I suppose it's interesting--but I wouldn't call it necessary, even though the redoubtable Alan Feinberg plays it about as well as we have any right to expect, and Sinclair probably knows it better than anyone in the universe except perhaps Porter himself. Ives fans, of course, should hear it and draw their own conclusions.

No, the big news here is the First Symphony, a work that should appeal to the universe beyond the Ives ghetto, particularly as this performance ought to be regarded in most respects as its premiere on disc. I don't say this lightly: excellent recordings already exist by Eugene Ormandy and Michael Tilson Thomas (both for Sony), but Sinclair not only has a new edition (with additional percussion in the finale that Ives specifically indicated in a letter but that never made it into the previously published score), he also has an interpretation that will prove a revelation to anyone who ever thought of this work as small-scale and unadventurous.

Of course, compared to the mature Ives it's tame stuff, but with all of its repeats in place and lasting some 45 minutes, the work now has a bigness of vision and greatness of heart that identifies it, emotionally at least, as genuine Ives, indelibly stamped with his irrepressible personality even at this early stage. The first movement, episodic though it may be, moves with majestic confidence toward its Brucknerian close, the quirky passages (such as the Stravinskian second subject for solo flute) standing out more vividly then ever before. The second movement, taken very slowly, now becomes a real Romantic adagio, clearly inspired by the Largo of Dvorák's "New World" Symphony (English horn solo and all). The perky scherzo perfectly sets up the athletic but very grand finale (so curiously reminiscent of Nielsen's Second Symphony, except that the Ives came first), with that riotous extra percussion toward the end clearly opening the door to the Second Symphony and the masterworks to come.

No one active today has a better feel for this music, for its past influences as well as its future destiny, than James Sinclair, and he galvanizes the players of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland to produce warmly idiomatic, extremely satisfying results. As anyone who has heard Naxos' excellent Malcolm Arnold symphony cycle from this venue might have guessed, the sonics also are outstanding in every respect. Whatever my reservations about the Emerson Concerto, for the symphony alone this disc deserves a very strong recommendation. Don't miss it!

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

James Sinclair is the world's foremost authority on the music of Charles Ives, but that doesn't guarantee success as an interpreter of the music. Fortunately, his musicianship evidently partakes of the same sympathy and thorough preparation as does his scholarship. These performances go straight to the top of the heap, imbuing Ives' quirky inspirations with a sense of inevitability and "rightness" rarely achieved in this repertoire. Interestingly, Sinclair doesn't manage this by minimizing the music's weirdness. Indeed, in the Third Symphony attentive listeners will notice the selective inclusion of some of those controversial dissonant "shadow lines" that add a touch of harmonic spice to the work's largely plain-spun hymn tunes.


The secret to Sinclair's success here lies largely in the remarkable transparency of texture he achieves, combined with propulsive tempos. The first movement of the Third Symphony, for example, flows with swift purposefulness before relaxing beautifully into the concluding flute solo. The Unanswered Question, at four and a half minutes, remains one of the swiftest ever. Some performances of this tiny masterpiece last more than six minutes, but Sinclair justifies his decision in the true "call and response" interaction between questioning trumpet and answering winds that this performance delineates with such persuasive clarity. He also brings a delicious rhythmic lift to the "barn dance" episode in Washington's Birthday.


Both the "Country Band" March and the Overture and March "1776" will be familiar from their appearance in the central movement of Three Places in New England, and in Sinclair's hands both pieces (particularly the former) display all of their humorous high spirits. Throughout the program, the Northern Sinfonia plays with impressive security and discipline, and Naxos' sonics capture the entire program with ideal balances and striking impact. In short, every aspect of this project has been realized about as well as it can be, and no admirer of Ives will want to miss out on the chance to hear it.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

This recording has a lot going for it. Ives' music permits such a wide latitude of interpretive options that it's difficult to criticize any performance on grounds other then technical incompetence, and Steven Mayer not only plays extremely well, he has interesting ideas about how this music should sound. The Concord Sonata receives a magisterial performance, some 10 minutes slower than Marc-André Hamelin's benchmark recording for New World, but the music itself is so dense that it never sounds slow. Quite the contrary. If Mayer sacrifices some typical Ivesian wildness, he compensates by allowing us to hear more of what's going on in even the densest passages. He's particularly adept at pointing up, say, Beethoven's Fifth on its various appearances in "Emerson", and despite his comparative leisure, he highlights the abrupt contrasts of tempo and dynamics in "Hawthorne" as well as anyone.


Mayer's relaxed reading of the "The Alcotts" has special charm and a warmth that's just right for this portrait of two girls practicing the piano at home. "Thoreau" is let down a bit by the recording, which fails to back off far enough to realize a true pianissimo, even though Mayer scales down his dynamic range as Ives requests. Indeed, about the only other quibble I have aside from this one is that Mayer doesn't give us a true "very fast" in the 7/4 section of "Emerson", though of course it's an open question whether or not Ives himself would have cared. In the final analysis, this performance makes an excellent introduction to the work, combining a healthy dose of Romantic expressiveness with great clarity, concentration, and boldness. Even the readings between movements (of bits of Ives' own essays and fragments taken from the eponymous writers, an aspect of the performance I truly dreaded) are sonorously but simply intoned by Kerry Shale, coming off well as a sort of palate-cleansing sorbet between the larger courses.


The three shorter works, all more or less related to the sonata (everything in Ives tends to be related to everything else anyway), make for a very interesting and entirely appropriate bonus. I particularly enjoyed the wacky and truculent Varied Air and Variations, a riotously obnoxious piece that doesn't get as much attention as it should. As noted, the sonics, though generally good, tend to put the microphones a touch too close to the piano, and in consequence somewhat limit the dynamic range while capturing a bit of performance noise besides--but this isn't really troublesome. If you're looking for a satisfying, low-priced way to get to know some truly remarkable piano music through intelligent and sympathetic performances, you can't go wrong here.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com