The Orchestral Music of Charles Ives: World Premieres and First Editions

Charles Ives (Composer), James Sinclair (Conductor), Orchestra New England (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Orchestra: Orchestra New England
• Conductor: James Sinclair
• Composer: Charles Ives
• Audio CD (March 11, 1993)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Koch Int'l Classics
• ASIN: B000001SDH
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #68,116 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #22 in Music > Classical > Historical Periods > Modern, 20th, & 21st Century > Composers > Ives, Charles

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some valuable "Critical Edition" performances here., January 4, 2003

By 

Bob Zeidler (Charlton, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Orchestral Music of Charles Ives: World Premieres and First Editions (Audio CD)

James Sinclair, for many years, has been associated with the music of Charles Ives, through both the Charles Ives Society and his work with the Ives Library at Yale University. So it should surprise no one (well, no Ivesian) that any performances of the music of Ives that Sinclair commits to disc will be authoritative.

That is certainly the case for this Koch Classics release, in which Sinclair conducts the Orchestra New England, formerly the Yale Theater Orchestra and a group that understands Ives performance practices as well as any; they've got this music in their blood. Better yet, every Ives piece on this CD is either [a] a world premiere or [b] a first recording of a Charles Ives Society critical edition, prepared either by Sinclair or by Kenneth Singleton, Sinclair's colleague.

To me, the most important piece on this CD is the version-for-small-orchestra performance of a true Ives masterpiece, his "Three Places in New England" (also known as his "First Orchestral Set"). Much of Ive's music was never performed within his lifetime, except for his (largely) private benefit, on those occasions when he would pay the musicians of a small "theater orchestra" out of his own pocket, just so he had some idea of what his compositions would sound like. Fortunately, "Three Places in New England" is one work that was. But not in its original form, for large orchestra. As Sinclair makes clear in his booklet notes, Ives - at the request of Nicolas Slonimsky - rewrote the work for small orchestra (Slonimsky's Boston Chamber Players), who premiered the work in this form in 1931. (Slonimsky then concertized in Europe with the music of Ives and other "moderns - Cowell, Ruggles and Varèse to name three - in a tour that included Slonimsky's conducting of the Berlin Philharmonic, a separate saga unto itself.) This critical edition largely restores the "for Slonimsky" chamber orchestra version at the same time that it cleans up many errors that were the result of Ives's doing the transcription under conditions of time pressures and poor health. Heard in this form, "Three Places" is truly a revelation in terms of how the textures are clarified and cleaned up and thus how the individual instrumental lines are permitted to "sound" without their being submerged in the background of a large symphony orchestra. Nowhere is this more evident than in the final movement of "Three Places": "The Housatonic at Stockbridge." Some call this Ives's very finest work, and I'm not of a mind to argue with them. Its initial quiet impressionism soon overwhelmed by full orchestral dynamics, only to have the full orchestra stop while leaving just soft strings at the very end, is a sublime example of Ives at his transcendental best. And I've never heard it performed (or sound) better than it does in this "Critical Edition" performance for small orchestra, surely in a form very close to its first performances by Slonimsky.

All of the works on this album can be considered "early" works, in that even the newest ("Three Places in New England") almost "makes it" into the first fully-productive decade of Ives's life as a composer. It is actually a canard - and an unfair appraisal of Ives the composer - to state that his music became more complex, both harmonically and rythmically, as he grew older. He wrote complex works as a relatively young man, and simple works as he got older. The "long arc" of his work was not from "the simple to the complex" but from the "commonplace (in terms of its materials, not its complexities, for which rhythmic and harmonic complexities abounded) to the ultimately transcendental, whether simple or complex."

Thus, on this album, we have the near-contemporaneous juxtaposition of a rather "Brahmsian" style of the early "Postlude in F" (but not without its Ivesian harmonic touches) and the riotous "Calcium Night Light." And, over an equivalently short span of time, we have the "Set of Four Ragtime Dances" set against the far more modern-sounding 1906 "Set for Theatre Orchestra," wiith its near-atonal (but very impressionistic) "In the Cage" (at barely a minute and a few seconds, a minor masterpiece). And, from the same period, the lovely "Largo cantibile" Hymn" with a beautiful cello solo.

Aside from my earlier comments on the beauty of "Three Places in New England" in terms of its small-orchestra setting, it can further be said that every work on this album benefits not only from the editorial scrutiny of Messrs. Sinclair and Singleton, but from the superb playing of the Orchestra New England througout. Fine sound, too.

The booklet notes state that Jim Sinclair arrived at Yale in 1972, and that he founded the Yale Theater Orchestra in 1974. This would have been a most propitious time for founding it, inasmuch as it was the year of the Ives centennial. It was also the year in which - on August 17 - Jim Sinclair and Ken Singleton were involved in an Ives centennial celebration concert on the lawn of Charlie's house in West Redding, CT, performing a few Ives premieres on that occasion with a mutual friend, Paul Winter, and his Consort. (Yes, THAT Paul Winter!) Thus, while Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas were celebrating the Ives centennial in a BIG way (in Danbury, Ives's birthplace but a town which he had largely put behind him when an adult), Jim Sinclair and Ken Singleton and a few surprisingly unusual friends - from a strictly musical standpoint - were having their own Ives centennial on Charlie's lawn, in a manner that I think Charlie would really have liked. I'm one who is fortunate to have a souvenir program from that concert. Charlie would have loved the program, too.

Bob Zeidler

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Rosetta stone for Ives, August 26, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Orchestral Music of Charles Ives: World Premieres and First Editions (Audio CD)

For years I'd been intrigued by Ives' music but had been stymied and ultimately put off by the knottier passages (which are many!)...Not for lack of trying or wanting to understand - no Rollo I! - I just didn't know what he expected me to make of all that "good strong dissonance." Whereas, say, Stravinsky's (even Schoenberg's) famously "dissonant" music generally communicated to me pretty readily, Ives' didn't. Was it SUPPOSED to feel inscrutable? Or was there something else to get out of it? How was I supposed to parse it? Well, this recording was a sort of Rosetta stone for me. The early pieces here - the 'Country Band' March and the Ragtime Dances particularly - filled in the gap that I'd felt for so long, the missing link between Ives' music and the popular music which hovers in and around almost everything he wrote. These pieces are, essentially, "take-offs" of standard forms (as per the titles): outlandishly adventurous for their time (and thoroughly amusing) but nonetheless relatively down-to-earth compared to Ives' later works. The Ivesian outbursts and distortions are here more clearly etched against their contexts and are therefore, to my ear, far easier to swallow. (An slight case of mixed metaphor, there, but let's move on.) The recording then offers the chance to see how Ives reworked the same material in more elaborate and obscure ways - "Putnam's Camp" incorporates the 'Country Band' March; "In the Inn" recasts one of the Ragtime Dances. Not to mention that the 4 Ragtime Dances are a fascinating chance to hear Ives work over essentially the same materials in four different ways. One can't help but begin to understand Ives' idiosyncracies (how he livens up a dull harmony with some extra dissonance, or a dull rhythm with some unexpected jerks and starts.) I would recommend supplementing these pieces with a recording of the First Piano Sonata, which, again, reuses much of the Ragtime material, but all in all aims for something much loftier. After having heard this recording I found that I was able to listen much 'deeper' into the First Piano Sonata - a profoundly satisfying experience. That in turn led me to a fuller appreciation for the celebrated Second Sonata, and from there the rest of Ives' output suddenly seemed entirely accessible. Well, a lot of it, at any rate. Perhaps I'm making this recording sound as though it's merely some sort of music appreciation tool; let me be entirely clear: this music is terrific in its own right. What I AM saying, in fact, is that even if you've already decided Ives isn't for you, you still ought to give this recording a chance. To the best of my knowledge, most of this material is unavailable on any other recording (this is, incidentally, an interesting smaller orchestration of the "Three Places" than the familiar version), and regardless, these are excellent, thrilling performances. Highly recommended.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Well Lit View of Ives, July 27, 2002

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Ypres1918 (Western Pennsylvania, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Orchestral Music of Charles Ives: World Premieres and First Editions (Audio CD)

I was skeptical about this disc. Since I already owned every work on it, in one way or another, I just kept walking past it. But just like the Ives disc "When the Moon...", this disc offers up a glimpse of many of the Ives minitures that are not to be had elsewhere. Done by a chamber orchestra, which vividly brings out all the quirkiness and crazy-quilt Americana that can be buried with larger ensembles, the music here is brisk, profoundly well detailed and irresistable. Sinclair and the New England Orchestra, do justice to every note, making this CD a perfect adjunct to any Ives collection. In fact, I would consider it an essential for any Ives fan. Don't be put off by the cover you see above. This is a serious disc, and well worth the purchase. You can thank me later.