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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Charlie done right, 21 Aug 2003
Following hard on the heels of Schermerhorn's Nashville Symphony Orchestra recording (also on Naxos) of some essential music of Howard Hanson is this new release of Ives' Symphony No. 2, coupled with his Robert Browning Overture. Schermerhorn and his Nashville group show signs of being fitting successors to Hanson himself, as well as Leonard Bernstein, Michael Tilson Thomas, Leonard Slatkin and Gerhard Schwarz, for definitive recorded performances of core-repertory American music.With the release of this album, earlier recordings of Ives' 2nd Symphony are, for all intents and purposes, passé, and, in key passages in the work, wrong. This new critical edition, prepared by Jonathan Elkus of the Charles Ives Society, corrects nearly 1,000 long-standing manuscript errors that have been repeated in recordings (and performances) dating back at least as early as Bernstein's late-'50's New York Philharmonic Orchestra recording on Columbia. Many of the corrections are quite minor, and may pass unnoticed by most listeners. But anyone familiar with this work will recognize the major corrections, including one to the concluding "raspberry" that thumbs its nose at the music establishment in which Ives served as both member and iconoclast. To say more here is to deprive you of the enjoyment of your own first hearing of this performance, which Schermerhorn has recently "taken on the road" with his orchestra, receiving rave reviews recently for a performance at Carnegie Hall. The discmate, Ives' "Robert Browning Overture," is altogether more challenging for both musician and listener, coming, as it does, from a later period in Ives' compositional life when his music seemed to focus on more cosmic themes. It has seldom been recorded, and here receives a performance that is every bit as definitive as the one of the 2nd Symphony. The Nashville Symphony Orchestra handles this difficult work with aplomb, as might well have been predicted if one thinks of Nashville as being one of the three domestic centers of the universe (along with New York and Los Angeles) for the ready availability of superb studio musicians. At a time when the major labels are in a state of disarray and retrenchment for failing to anticipate changing public tastes in music (not necessarily for the better), Naxos keeps raising the bar, releasing albums of significant, and well-performed and -recorded, music almost before you can ask "What's next?" And Naxos has provided some of the best Ives liner notes available anywhere: Nicely researched and very well written, they are a model of musicological clarity and historical accuracy. Recommended completely without reservation. At any price.
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~ Charles Ives
~ Charles Ives
~ Charles Ives
~ Benjamin Britten
~ Michael Tippett
