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Review
Ives held up a musical mirror to early 20th century America, and he found an astonishing variety of ways of framing folk songs, hymn tunes, landscapes and social scenes inside a restless, adventurous musical language. As Michael Tilson Thomas puts it in his notes: "Ives's music is gleeful, goofy, ecstatic, and nostalgic, but always in the service of his larger goal, which is like Mahler's: to create a whole musical world."
The essence of Ives can be devilishly difficult to capture at the best of times...but on a single cd? No way! At least, that's what I thought until this disc went into my cd player - and stayed there, for two complete play-throughs; and there have been more since. Michael Tilson Thomas has managed the impossible: a totally satisfying overview of Ives's genius on one sixty-five minute cd. Songs, symphonies, psalms and tone poems - they're all represented, and imaginatively sequenced as an organic whole - only someone who had an intimate knowledge and understanding of Ives could have made it work as well as this.
The concert divides into four sections: Tilson Thomas begins by reflecting Ives's boyhood memories, then his evocations of landscape, works concerning war, and finally religion. So, we start with the craggy, uncompromising fanfares of From the Steeples and the Mountains; that segues into the aching nostalgia of The Things our Fathers Loved (baritone Thomas Hampson with Tilson Thomas at the piano), and the shimmering reflections of The Pond for chorus and orchestra...before the brilliant, humorous patter of Memories - Hampson breathlessly excited in a childs eyes view of a visit to the opera house.
The brazen confidence of The Circus Band leads us into the cd's centrepiece: Three Places in New England. Then comes the unsettling sequence of war songs, with a stroke of programming genius, the transition from Tom Sails Away into the Fugue from Ives's Fourth Symphony; it sounds as though it was always meant to happen like this. Finally, after the trio of religious pieces, the inevitable ending: how could it be anything other than The Unanswered Question?
Hampson is a piece of perfect casting, the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus sound truly inspired, and the recording is superb, capturing the subtlest soundscapes and the brashest explosions of brass with ease, yet with no loss of impact.
Tilson Thomas has given us the essence of Ives, and as he says in the notes: "Ives emerges as an American musical romantic poet". Dont make the mistake of thinking of this as some kind of 'Best of...' compilation; it isn't, and I'm sure was never intended to be. The title is spot on: this is 'An American Journey' - and if you only have room for one Ives cd in your collection...
Andrew McGregor - presenter of CD Review on Radio 3 --John Armstrong
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Customer Reviews
To those familiar with Ives' better known works there is still plenty to explore here and a chace too to see those familiar works in a new light. Ives is sometimes compared to Mahler for his all encompassing view of music and the similarities are extended here because it is clear that his own songs carried a big influence on such works as his Holidays Symphony, Fourth Symphony and the Orchestral Sets. Song, therefore, and not just borrowed vernacular, shape his symphonic works just as they did for Mahler.
Some of the works come in new arrangements and the democratically minded Ives was not too fussy about that. One that might surprise is the choral finale to the "Three Places in New England". The range and humour of the works on this programme might seem bewildering but there's no mistaking the person behind them. The style may vary from something close to Gilbert and Sullivan ("The Opera House"); cowboy music (Charlie Rutlage) - cowboy music that drifts into expressionism and speech song, as Charlie Rutlage meets his doom; to religious mysticism - "The Unanswered Question" / "From The Steeples to the Mountains" in other places. Rarely does Ives offer easy harmonies - even a Victorian parlour style song is given a polytonal accompaniement.
There are several lesser known gems to relish too: "General Booth Enters Heaven"; the anti war "Tom Sails Away" or the pro war and patriotic "They Are There". What really impresses is how these works link so inevitably together. The way that "Tom Sails Away" so naturally flows into the Fugue from the Fourth Symphony is remarkable and puts that fugue in a whole new light.
Add to all this fine live performances - though the odd detail gets lost here and there in a quite admittedly thin sound recording - and you have an indispensible recording. Whether you are new to Ives or very familiar; if you were to only ever have one Ives recording this would have to be the one. It's a great and loving tribute to Charles Ives from Michael Tilson Thomas.
As a visionary and outside the classical mainstream its a wonder Ives never got any rock star endorsement.Like Frank Zappa with Edgar Varese
Unless Ives used his sources like folk songs or hymns his actual music could be difficult but its worth persevering with.
But nowadays this area of symphonic music is in with a better chance of mass mainstream success when Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello become additions to the catalog
Its all there waiting to explore and this CD is the ultimate sampler
In the Seventies MTT made good but not exceptioanl recordings of Ives's major orchestral works. Here he concentrates on songs and orchestral bits and pieces, except for the extended Three Places in New England, which is x-rayed with exceptionally detailed sonics. Thomas Hampson secures his position as the best singer of American songs with highly dramatized, unbuttoned singing--his Charlie Rutlage, a Texas-accented elegy for a fallen cowpoke, and the familiar General William Booth Enters Into Heaven are instant classics. Chorus and orchestra enter in the spirit of bumptious good cheer, and overall a good time was had by all, even though the crowd was sent home sobered up by the supernaturally melancholy Unanswered Question, which never fails to send a shiver through the listener.
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