Dec. 13: Sony Classical to Release Charles Ives – The RCA and Columbia Album Anthology in Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of American Composer
Sony Classical to Release
Charles Ives – The RCA and Columbia Album Anthology
In Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of
American Composer Charles Ives
Iconic Albums from the RCA and Columbia catalogs recorded in the analog era 1945–76 with 83 works for the first time on CD
Album Release Date: December 13, 2024
Reviewer Rate: $30.01
In celebration of the Ives 150th anniversary year, Sony Classical proudly presents two of the most authoritative collections ever released of works by this eccentric, prophetic American genius. The 22-CD box set Charles Ives – The Anthology 1945–1976, which will be released on November 29, 2024, brings together the entire discography amassed over three decades by Columbia Masterworks, the label that dedicated itself with unmatched zeal to bringing his visionary works to public attention. The important albums made by RCA Victor during those years are also included in this, the largest and most comprehensive Ives compilation ever issued.
In January 1939 – twelve years after Ives had stopped composing new works altogether – John Kirkpatrick, the pianist who would become the composer’s friend and leading collaborator, played his Second Sonata (1916–1919), subtitled “Concord, Mass., 1840–1860” at New York’s Town Hall. It was the first public performance of Ives’s ferociously demanding masterpiece, and it garnered the first review of his music by a prominent, mainstream critic, who hailed the work as “the greatest music composed by an American”.
This was the turning point: “the artist and the work that launched the Ives revolution”, as it came to be known. In 1945, Kirkpatrick recorded the “Concord” Sonata for Columbia, which released it on 78s in 1948 and on vinyl a year later. Two decades later, the pianist made the celebrated stereo LP version of his painstakingly revised edition. Both of these still definitive recordings are in Sony’s new Ives “Anthology”.
In 1949, another outstanding interpreter of American music, William Masselos, gave another long overdue première, Ives’s remarkable First Piano Sonata (1909–21). A year later Masselos recorded it for Columbia, then he remade it in stereo for RCA Victor in 1966. Once again, a single artist’s two benchmarks, though in this case quite different, readings – the later one rather less reverential, more rhapsodic – are included in the new set.
Ives’s breakthrough as an orchestral composer finally came in 1946, when his Third Symphony “The Camp Meeting” (1901–12) was played in New York – the first time he had ever heard any of his symphonies performed complete. The next year it won him the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. In 1951, his Second Symphony (1907–09) had its première, with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. It was the first time that Ives, by then 77 years old, heard one of his major orchestral compositions played to his own satisfaction. Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic recorded the symphony in 1958, Columbia released it in 1960 along with an invaluable 13-minute bonus record of Bernstein talking about Ives and the symphony’s musical quotations.
During the 1960s, when the posthumous “Ives Revolution” was in full swing, Bernstein recorded the Third Symphony and the symphony of “New England Holidays”. In 1965, Ives’s profoundly searching Fourth Symphony, which Aaron Copland termed “an astonishing conception in every way”, had its première in 1965, with Leopold Stokowski conducting the American Symphony – a Grammy-winning milestone in American music history. In the same year, Morton Gould, conducting the Chicago Symphony for RCA, made the first recording of Ives’s First Symphony, begun when he was a student at Yale and still clearly in the European tradition. It also won a Grammy.
Not to be outdone, Eugene Ormandy jumped on the Ives bandwagon in Philadelphia, recording the first three symphonies, the “Holidays” and the beloved orchestral set Three Places in New England (the last-named work twice!) between 1964 and 1974. In that year, in London, José Serebrier, a co-conductor with Stokowski of the hugely complex Fourth’s première, recorded a version edited for a single conductor. The New York Times called the performance “stunning” and praised it for “extraordinary control and textural clarity”. Every one of these classic performances by Ormandy, Bernstein, Stokowski and Serebrier can be found in the Sony Ives “Anthology”.
Ives’s more than 150 songs rank among his finest achievements. 24 were recorded in 1969 by soprano Evelyn Lear and baritone Thomas Stewart, with Ives specialist Alan Mandel at the piano. This is the album’s first outing on CD. The greatest of the songs is the stirring General William Booth Enters into Heaven, now more familiar in the arrangement for bass, chorus and chamber orchestra. That version was part of the Gregg Smith Singers’ acclaimed 1966 album of Ives’s choral works, reissued in this set. Of his many chamber works, probably the best known are Ives’s two String Quartets, included here in the Juilliard String Quartet’s unsurpassed 1967 recording. The Second of his four Violin Sonatas is heard in a historic recording from 1950, never before issued on CD. The violin prodigy Patricia Travers was joined by pianist Otto Herz.
There are numerous other landmark recordings gathered in this epoch-making set, exploring works from every corner of Ives’s vast output, many of them also appearing for the first time on CD. One is a wildly entertaining album entitled Old Songs Deranged, played by the Yale Theater Orchestra and never reissued after its original Columbia release a half century ago. Edited and conducted by leading Ives authority James Sinclair, it inspired this wholehearted endorsement in a recent MusicWeb International Ives survey urgently calling for its re-release: “It sounds great! The marches are high-stepping, toe-tapping, swaggering romps. The sound of the orchestra is … completely idiomatic. This recording does such a good job of evoking Ives’ description of a ‘marching band with wings’ that it practically smells like Ives. The other works are wonderful too. Pieces like ‘Mists’ and ‘Evening’ conjure Victorian salon music filtered through the nostalgia of intervening years.” In short, Sinclair’s disc is a welcome addition to Sony Classical’s “Anthology 1945–76”, without doubt the essential Ives collection.
SET CONTENTS
Disc 1:
ML 4250
Ives: Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord, Mass., 1840-60”
MM-749
Ives: Piano Sonata No.1: IIb. In The Inn: Allegro-Chorus
Disc 2:
ML 4490 Modern American Music Series
Ives: Piano Sonata No. 1
ML 2169
Ives: Sonata No.2 for Violin and Piano
Disc 3:
KS 6155
Ives: Symphony No. 2
Leonard Bernstein discusses Charles Ives
Disc 4:
MS 6775
Ives: Symphony No. 4
MS 7015
Ives: Robert Browning Overture
Disc 5:
MS 6843
Ives: Symphony No. 3 “The Camp Meeting”
Ives: Central Park in the Dark
Ives: Decoration Day
Ives: The Unanswered Question
MS 6161
Ives: Variations on “America”
Disc 6:
LSC-2893
Ives: Variations on “America”
Ives: Symphony No 1 in D Minor
Ives: The Unanswered Question
Disc 7:
MS 6921 Music for Chorus
Ives: General William Booth Enters into Heaven
Ives: Serenity
Ives: The Circus Band
Ives: December
Ives: The New River
Ives: Three Harvest Home Chorales
Ives: Psalm 100
Ives: Psalm 67
Ives: Psalm 24
Ives: Psalm 90
Ives: Psalm 150
Disc 8:
LSC-2941
Ives: Piano Sonata No.1
Disc 9:
LSC-2959
Ives: Orchestral Set No 2
Ives: Three Places in New England: II. Putnam's Camp
Ives: Robert Browning Overture
Disc 10:
MS 7027
Ives: String Quartet No. 1 “From the Salvation Army”
Ives: String Quartet No. 2
Disc 11:
MS 7111
Ives: Symphony No. 1
Ives: Three Places in New England
MS 7289
Ives (arr. William Schuman): Variations on “America”
Disc 12:
MS 7147
Ives: A Symphony, New England Holidays
M3X 31068 (M 31071)
Ives: The Gong on the Hook and Ladder
Ives: The Circus Band. March
Disc 13:
MS 7192
Ives: Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord, Mass., 1840-60”
Disc 14:
MS 7321: New Music of Charles Ives
Ives: Processional “Let There Be Light”
Ives: Psalm 14
Ives: Psalm 54
Ives: Psalm 25
Ives: Psalm 135
Ives: Walt Whitman
Ives: 2 Slants (Christian and Pagan)
Ives: Duty
Ives: Vita
Ives: On the Antipodes
Ives: The Last Reader
Ives: Luck and Work
Ives: Like a Sick Eagle
Ives: A Lecture (Tolerance)
Ives: from the "Incantation"
Ives: The Pond
Ives: At Sea
Ives: The Children’s Hour
Ives: The Rainbow
Disc 15:
MS 7318 Calcium Light Night
Ives: Orchestral Set No. 1
Ives: Tone Roads No. 1
Ives: Orchestral Set No. 3
Ives: From the Steeples and the Mountains
Ives: The Rainbow
Ives: Ann Street
Ives: Scherzo: Over the Pavements
Ives: Orchestral Set No. 2 - Selections
Ives: Tone Roads No. 3
Ives: The Pond
Ives: Scherzo: All the Way Around and Back
Ives: Chromâtimelôdtune
M 33513
Ives: Omega Lambda Chi
Ives: March Intercollegiate
Disc 16:
M 30230 Chamber Music
Ives: Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano
Ives: A Set of Three Short Pieces
Ives: In re con moto et al
Ives: Largo for Violin, Clarinet and Piano
Ives: Largo risoluto No. 1
Ives: Hallowe'en
Ives: Largo risoluto No. 2
Ives: Largo for Violin and Piano
Disc 17:
M 30229 American Scenes - American Poets
Ives: The Things Our Fathers Loved
Ives: Walking
Ives: Autumn
Ives: Maple Leaves
Ives: At the River
Ives: Circus Band
Ives: The Side Show
Ives: Charlie Rutlage
Ives: Tom Sails Away
Ives: They are There!
Ives: In Flanders Field
Ives: Two Little Flowers
Ives: The Greatest Man
Ives: There is a Lane
Ives: The Last Reader
Ives: The Children’s Hour
Ives: Walt Whitman
Ives: The Light that is Felt
Ives: Serenity
Ives: Thoreau
Ives: Duty
Ives: Afterglow
Ives: The Housatonic at Stockbridge
Ives: Grantchester
Disc 18:
M 32969 Old Songs Deranged - Music for Theater Orchestra
Ives: Country Band March
Ives: The Swimmers
Ives: Mists
Ives: Charlie Rutlage
Ives: Evening
Ives: March II
Ives: March III
Ives: Overture and March 1776"
Ives: An Old Song Deranged
Ives: Gyp the Blood or Hearst? Which is Worst?
Ives: Remembrance
Ives: Fugue in Four Keys on The Shining Shore"
Ives: Chromatimelodtune
Ives: Holiday Quickstep
MG 33728 (2) Spirit Of '76
C. Ives (arr. William Schumann): Variations on “America”
Disc 19:
ARL1-0589
Ives: Symphony No. 4
Disc 20:
ARL1-0663
Ives: Symphony No. 2
LSC-3060
Ives: Symphony No. 3 “The Camp Meeting”
Disc 21:
ARL1-1249
Ives: A Symphony: New England Holidays
ARL1-1682
Ives: Three Places in New England
Disc 22:
ARL1-1599
Barber: String Quartet in B Minor, Op. 11
Ives: String Quartet No. 2
Ives: Scherzo for String Quartet