Charles Ives' four violin sonatas count among the composer's most focused and imaginative works in any genre. They contain enough craggy dissonances, mangled hymn tunes, and rhythmic horseplay to satisfy hard-core Ivesians, yet their burly textures and volatile mood swings communicate a sense of immediacy not dissimilar to late-Romantic violin sonatas by Brahms and Franck. Individually and collectively violinist Curt Thompson and pianist Rodney Waters are fully on top of and into these works. Thompson's acerbic, nasal tone is particularly effective in sustained lyrical passages, and at times he alters it to take on a cello-like timbre (listen to the Third Sonata's drawn out first-movement coda, for instance). He also digs into Ives' uptempo humor with idiomatic gusto in the Fourth Sonata's outer movements and in the Second Sonata's central "In The Barn" movement--an "unsquare" dance if ever there were one! For his part, Waters brings maximum security and character to the composer's difficult piano parts.


True, Thompson doesn't match the tonal and expressive variety violinist Gregory Fulkerson commands in the above-mentioned reference versions, which are better engineered as well. But you can't beat having all four Ives Sonatas on a single, bargain-priced disc, and the brilliant booklet notes by Ives scholar H. Wiley Hitchcock are models of their kind. Recommended.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

It's always good to have new recordings of Ives' two quartets (here including a bonus of the zany Scherzo for String Quartet). They are wonderful works, the first tuneful and charming, the second one of Ives' finest mature pieces. In the Second quartet the Blair Quartet charts a middle course between the Emerson's sleek and swift version on DG and the much slower, heavier Leipzig Quartet reading on MDG. Their less-polished ensemble sonority, grainier than the competition but never in an unpleasant or inartistic way, suits the music well, whether in the plain-spun hymn tunes of the First quartet or the raucous eruptions of the Second.


Only in the latter work's transcendental closing bars might I have wished for a smoother, richer timbre, but there's no questioning the sensible pacing or the players' mastery of the idiom. The sonics are also flatteringly clear and coherent, allowing plenty of contrapuntal detail to register without picking up extraneous performance noises or the ensemble's own breathing--almost always a problem, it seems, with quartet productions. God only knows if the Emerson version is still available, and for all the enticing additional couplings (a bevy of short pieces), the Leipzigers' Wagnerian take on the Second Quartet may not be to all tastes (and the disc is extremely expensive). That makes this release a very welcome addition to the Ives discography.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com