Browse by Artist: IVES, CHARLES

Artist:	IVES, CHARLES
Title:	A Radical In A Suit And Tie: Premiere Recordings
Label:	EL RECORDS (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ACMEM 146CD

"The music of Charles Ives is a cultural sourcebook of America at the beginning of the 20th century. He took the evangelical hymns, the college songs, the melodies of the dance hall, the tunes of small town bands and the sounds of village life and shaped them into musical works that are at once familiar and of startling originality. Long considered to be unplayable, his musical juxtapositions would prove to be enormously influential and inform such kaleidoscopic inventions as Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle and The Beach Boys' Smile. Ives today is regarded as 'a greatly original, immensely creative composer, who gave new dimensions to the vast and varied heritage of Americašs music.' A true 'American Original' who marched to a different beat. Ives audience stretches beyond classical into the modern avant-garde fields of Cage, Varčse and Stockhausen. He is very collectable and none of the pieces that comprise our edition have ever been re-released or restored digitally."

Artist:	IVES, CHARLES
Title:	The Unknown Ives, Volume 2
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80618CD

Premiere recordings of unpublished works and new critical editions. Donald Berman, piano; (with Stephen Drury, piano 2). "The works on The Unknown Ives, Volume 2 include some of his best and most searching experiments: fragments, personal explorations, cerebral excursions, and works of unabashed amusement. What emerges from their juxtaposition is a sense of canon. The spectrum of pieces, from adolescence to maturity, simple to complex, illustrates the boundaries of the complete oeuvre. From fragment to complete work, gestures meld, and motivic detours begin to describe a broad musical profile of Ives the complete musician. This recording completes the catalogue of Ives's short, though substantial, piano compositions presented on The Unknown Ives. Honing the unpublished manuscripts has brought to light some 40 piano works, two hours of music, apart from the two major piano sonatas of Ives. Hearing them illumines a more complete picture of Ives the composer. Meeting that music on its own terms is a fitting tribute to the composer who desired to make music that had a life of its own roaring volition. This recording includes published pieces that I have re-evaluated and revised. Many were initially edited by my teacher John Kirkpatrick (1905-1991), the American pianist, editor, and ardent champion of Ives. His meticulous efforts to identify, index, and catalogue loose manuscript sheets after Ives's death unquestionably comprise one of the heroic achievements in twentieth-century American music. Kirkpatrick's fastidious quest to divine playable editions of the music is a fascinating and at times problematic counterpoint to the compositions' rough edges. But essentially, Ives's volcanic nature and ambivalent attitudes likely served to obstruct public hearings of the music during his life; Kirkpatrick's asserting influence brought much of that music to light, including this recording." -- Donald Berman.

Artist:	IVES, CHARLES
Title:	The Complete Recordings of Charles Ives at the Piano
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80642CD

1933-1943. "The invention of sound-recording devices late in the nineteenth century made possible the preservation of definitive performances played or led by some important composers of the first decades of the twentieth century. Elgar, Rachmaninoff, Richard Strauss, and Stravinsky, among others, left a significant legacy of recordings of their own works. Charles Ives, however, did not approach recording in order to leave a legacy. At least at first, he simply wanted an opportunity to listen to some of his music with advantageous detachment (and possibly to shortcut supplying to Henry Cowell and others variants of his music). With virtually no performances of his important music occurring during the first two decades of the century, Ives certainly had a backlog of curiosity about the sound of his own compositional efforts, and the need to judge them as such. By 1933 Ives had retired from his insurance business and had largely finished writing his autobiographical Memos. He had heard some performances of his instrumental works (mostly in very disappointing efforts), but none of his piano works. While on an extended European vacation, he introduced himself to recording, at the Columbia Graphophone Company in London. Over the course of a decade that included four such sessions, Ives recorded seventeen different pieces, ranging from the early 'March No. 6' and rejected 'Largo for Symphony No. 1' to the 'improvisations' that indeed may have been freshly created in front of the microphone in 1938. But most of the music recorded -- the 'Four Transcriptions from 'Emerson,' the 'Studies Nos. 2, 9, 11, and 23,' and the 'Emerson' movement of Sonata No. 2 for Piano: 'Concord, Mass.' -- is related closely to Ives' early, unfinished 'Emerson Overture' for Piano and Orchestra (circa 1910?11). This meticulously re-mastered reissue restores this historic recording, originally issued by CRI, to the catalogue. The booklet includes complete tracking information and extensive historical notes and documentation."

Artist:	IVES, CHARLES
Title:	The Light That Is Felt: Songs Of Charles Ives
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	NW 80680CD

"Charles Ives composed nearly 200 songs throughout his life. Wiley Hitchcock, in the thorough introduction to his 2004 critical edition 129 Songs, described the Ives song canon as 'the contents of a kind of scrapbook or commonplace book or chapbook, or even a desk drawer. Into such a receptacle Ives tossed irregularly, if not casually, his reactions -- in the form of songs -- to memories, personalities, places, events, discoveries, ideas, visions, and fantasies in his life.' Whether popular tale or personal reflection, this concept of the songs as memorabilia is realized in a most powerful way: the songs emotionally and viscerally evoke memory. Captured memories -- real or idealized, distant or near -- are the materials for the music. From cosmopolitan incident ('Ann Street') to pastoral stroll ('The Housatonic at Stockbridge') Ives's songs describe a range of experience: a child's playtime, a commuter's observations, a courter's hope. His songs exhibit reverence for the populace and pop culture, daring adventure, and family devotion; life and death. This new recording of 27 songs features superlative performances by soprano Susan Narucki, renowned for her authoritative interpretations of contemporary American music, and Donald Berman, whose recordings of Ives's piano music have been critically acclaimed."

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