Customer Reviews

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

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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

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.

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.

The group on this album is a chamber orchestra, but that should not deter you. In fact, the smaller ensemble seems very appropriate on pieces such as the "Country Band March", in which Ives pays tribute to the enthusiastic amateurism of small-town marching bands. The piece cycles through a number of popular songs, with the occasional over-excited instrumentalist tossing in a favorite tune of his own. It builds to a climax in which the speed and energy of the music outpace the abilities of the ensemble and the whole thing seems on the verge of collapse as it roars toward the finish line. A lone saxophone is caught off-guard by the sudden finale and lets out a few solitary notes before falling into embarrassed silence. This must be a challenging piece to conduct, for the ensemble has to imitate the undisciplined, rambunctious energy of an amateur marching band while faithfully performing a carefully notated score. The ONE pulls it off though, balancing both the comic and abstract elements of the music.

The pieces that follow are mostly sketches of various aspects of Ives' years at Yale. Most entertaining is "Yale-Princeton Football Game", in which the trumpet imitates the zig-zagging 55-yard run by the Yale quarterback while the piccolo trills the referee's whistle. Ives' "Four Ragtime Dances", according to the liner notes, were begun in the late 1890's, when "the national ragtime craze swept the campus". As a college student in 2007, I am highly entertained by the idea of a 'ragtime craze' sweeping the campus.

Ives himself had mixed feelings about his chamber orchestra arrangement of "Three Places in New England", calling the piano a "poor substitute" for the bassoons of the original version. Yet the New Englanders are able to bring a convincingly intimate quality to the piece. This works well during the first movement, "The Saint-Gaudens in Boston Common", inspired by a bas-relief honoring the first black regiment in the Union army. Sinclair creates a very convincing portrait of the rag-tag infantry that contrasts the creeping dread of imminent battle with the elation and hope of the soldiers in the 54th. The second movement, "Putnam's Camp, Redding, Connecticut", again calls on the performers to do their best marching band impression, and in these passages the ONE shines as well.

The final movement, "The Housatonic at Stockbridge", is based on Ives' fond memory of a riverside walk with Mrs. Ives, the summer of their marriage. A mist hung over the water and hymns from a distant church could just be heard. This is one of Ives' most beautiful compositions. The subtle dissonance of the strings and piano make the whole thing seem like a distant, foggy memory. Yet while listening, I can't help but miss the hushed intensity that a full orchestra brings to the score. That aside, this is a very good survey of Ives that will not disappoint.

The Ragtime pieces in the beginning are really *very* good and imaginative. I realized while listening that the composer that wrote for the early Loonie Tunes cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny *must* have been thinking of this music when he wrote his. Considering the time period, this thought makes perfect sense. The music manages to capture the zietgeist of Ives' world yet stands as a timeless expression of what it is to live. This is such extraordinary writing and is captured with some of the best playing I have heard of Ives since Bernstein.