Customer Reviews

Charles Ives: The Sonatas For Violin And Piano

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is simply great music. Ives moves in the blink of an eye from traditional ditties to crashing dissonances, and somehow it all works. Don't assume that the 3d and 4th Sonatas are somehow more "advanced" than the 1st and 2d--they're not. Right from the start of the 1st, this music keeps moving in surprising and delightful ways. Worth many many listens. For the price of one disc, you get two great discs containing what may be the greatest cycle of Sonatas for Violin and Piano of the century. And by the way--these Sonatas of Ives resist the shorthand, "Violin Sonata," more than any I can think of. The writing for the piano is equally compelling to that of the writing for violin.

I agree with everything positive said by the other reviewers about this set. This is some of my favorite music by Ives, and it is beautifully performed here by Fulkerson and Shannon. My complaint stems from the fact that both CDs put together only come out to 79 minutes and 42 seconds, which means the whole set could have, and should have, been put on one CD instead of two. And no, it is NOT two CDs for the "price of one," as one reviewer has stated. When was the last time YOU spent $34 for one CD?? Still, it is a great set. Save your pennies and get it if you like Ives and/or violin sonatas.

An excellent recording with ample notes on the source material. This is some of the prettiest music in the twentieth century repertoire. Ives often reworked material, his own and others, and was fond of deconstructing hymns and patriotic songs. Sometimes, he just wants to rag.
I like the Second and Third Sonatas the best, but I suspect that Charley would have preferred the Fourth (called "Children's Day at Camp Meeting"). The camp meetings were as important to his musical formation as his dad's marching bands. Not a practicing Christian myself, nevertheless I find it impossible to refrain from joining in on "Jesus Loves Me" or "Shall We Gather at the River." It never was this nice at Sunday school.
Ives reworked much of this material into his symphonies and more "challenging" works. These sonatas are an excellent introduction to Ives; better yet, they are a wonderful introduction to classical music.

... with Charles Ives's Third Sonata for Violin and Piano. I've been listening to it once or twice a day for almost two weeks, and I keep hearing it more 'completely', catching new nuances, forming new links between passages. Listening to music -- really listening and not merely tolerating it in the background of your life and mind -- involves many levels of memory. The first time you hear a piece, you're already required to remember it as you go. If you don't remember anything, it's just noise. I'm neither a violinist nor a pianist, though I am a career musician, so I don't see any likelihood that I'll memorize this sonata as a performer would, but I already know it well enough to detect any significant differences in affect or technique between different performances. And it's such differences that make it worthwhile to have and hear different recordings of the same composition.

I have three recordings of the four sonatas now.

Ives: Violin Sonatas Nos. 1-4 is the one I've owned for years, without playing it so often, though in fact it's quite well done.

Ives: Four Sonatas is the newest; hearing it set off my current obsession with #3. I've reviwed this one

Charles Ives: The Sonatas For Violin And Piano is this one. It's not a new performance; in fact it was recorded in 1988, but it's new for me, and the differences of interpretation make it very interesting. I can't and won't declare that it's more proficiently played than the performance by Hilary Hahn and Valentina Lisitsa. The two young women play all four sonatas with consummate facility. But this performance by Gregory Fulkerson and Robert Shannon, both contemporary and 'popular' music specialists, has virtues that the Hahn/Lisitsa concert-hall performance lacks. Fulkerson and Shannon play into each other more intimately; they seem more conscious of each other's inflections and attitudes toward the music. More easily to be heard, their instruments balance better both in timbre and in volume. These pieces are piano-dominated in any performance, and Lisitsa's grandest-of-grand pianos overawes Hahn's violin somewhat too potently. Is Shannon playing a smaller instrument, or using less pedal? In either case, as I said, the violin and piano balance better and share more of the excitement in this recording.

Hilary Hahn is as American as breakfast cereal. She was born in Lexington, Virginia. Valentina Lisitsa is Ukrainian. I mention those facts because, surprisingly, the performance by Fulkerson and Shannon sounds intrinsically more "American" than that of Hahn and Lisitsa. The latter might be Brahms or Bartok in terms of affect ... somehow very 'classical' and intellectualized. But Ives was himself an American phenomenon, more American than Wheaties or apple pie, and the musical ambience of his American time and place permeates all his music. In these four sonatas, he quotes and transforms New England hymns, patriotic marches, sheet-music hit songs, barn-dance fiddle tunes, and all sorts of sentimental Americana. Hahn and Lisitsa subdue the folksy, jivey, sometimes comically corny Americana of Ives; they make him 'respectable' to conservatory ears. Fulkerson channels those old-time fiddlers; he empathizes with those church-going New Englanders; he captures the freshness and brashness that Ives heard in his American milieu. You can notice the snappiness of Fulkerson's fiddle-tune styling immediately in the second movement allegro of Sonata #3, but his sense of the sources of Ives's syncretic music pervades every movement of this interpretation. I like what he does. I like it a lot.

Dear Sirs:

These CDs have the wonderful music of one of America's, nay, the world's, most important composers, Charles Ives, played beautifully by Fulkerson and Shannon.

Okay, I can understand why you issued two CDs instead of one; the total music runs just over 79', making it a tight squeeze onto one CD. You wouldn't want to cut anything.

But $34 for 79' of music, as wonderful as it may be? Get real. Have you heard of a label called Vox? A label that puts two-CD packages together for about $12? Or how about Naxos, that magnificant bargain classical label, which has the same recordings on one disc for $7?

Sorry, Bridge, but I won't spend what amounts to about a week's worth of groceries on two music CDs, as good as they are.