This is the fourth release in the
Naxos
series of recordings with James Sinclair of orchestral music by Charles Ives and it
includes two world première recordings,
The General
Slocum and
Overture in g minor, both presented in
realisations by David Porter. It’s not as if the world
has been pining for recordings of these works, but they are well
worth hearing - the first commemorating the death of over a thousand
people when a pleasure steamer blew up, the latter a Yale assignment,
hardly recognisable as the work of Ives; like the first symphony,
it might well have been written by Brahms or Dvořák.
Despite which, I really like the First Symphony. I used to have
the Abravanel recording on Vanguard; I must investigate the more
recent offerings - will it be Sinclair/Naxos, Järvi/Chandos
or Litton/Hyperion? - perhaps in a forthcoming Download Roundup.
Those who steer clear of Ives’ reputation as an
enfant
terrible may be reassured that there’s nothing really
shocking in this programme, the main part of which is made up
of three movements from his Holidays Symphony. Even the glorious
chaos at the end of
The Fourth of July is good fun, evocative
of a boy’s-eye view of the parade and the marching bands.
The marvel is that Ives composed this work long before it became
fashionable to write about aleatoric music, polytonality and
polyrhythm.
I’m a little puzzled why it was necessary to carve up the
symphony, with its first movement,
Washington’s Birthday,
on another Naxos CD, 8.559087, and its movements separated by
the other items here. I know that the four movements were originally
conceived as separate tone poems, but it would have been more
logical to keep them together. There would have been enough space
on the new recording to have included the whole symphony, even
at the cost of duplicating that one movement.
You’ll see from the
Musicweb
survey of recordings of the symphony that I’m not alone
in this preference, though James Sinclair’s recording with
the Northern Sinfonia of
Washington’s Birthday on
the earlier CD receives an otherwise strong recommendation. Whatever
reservations I may have, I liked the contrast between the quiet
opening of
Decoration Day, at the start of the CD, and
Thanksgiving
and Forefathers’ Day, which makes a resounding conclusion
to the recording.
Apart from the two premières, there are two other rarities
on the new CD, the
Postlude which Ives originally conceived
as an organ piece and subsequently orchestrated, and the commemoration
of a famous Yale-Princeton varsity match. They are both pleasant
enough, though hardly vintage Ives, and the performances make
a good case for them.
James Sinclair is a noted Ives scholar and his earlier recordings
for Naxos have been well received, so it comes as no surprise
that everything here sounds thoroughly idiomatic. Those earlier
recordings have been with the National Symphony Orchestra of
Ireland and the Northern Sinfonia of England. Unlike the Nashville
Symphony Orchestra, who recorded
Symphony No.2 and the
Robert
Browning Orchestra for Naxos with kennethe Schermerhorn at
the helm, neither of these is exactly to the Ivesian manner born,
any more than the Malmö performers on the current CD and
on Sinclair’s recording of
Three Orchestral Sets,
yet everything here continues the good work of the earlier discs.
Stephen Hall made that earlier Malmö recording of the
Orchestral
Sets his Recording of the Month (8.559353 - see
review),
not least because it brought the three works together. If I am
marginally less impressed with the current CD, it’s for
the opposite reason, the disintegration of the Holidays Symphony.
The recording is good, with a wide dynamic range - from the almost
inaudible opening chords of
Decoration Day to the cataclysmic
sound of the boat’s boiler exploding in
The General
Slocum and the conflicting marching bands in
The Fourth
of July.
The presentation is good, too, with notes, by Jan Swafford, which
are readable and informative and a wonderful collage on the front
cover, painted by James Bigelow Hall, grandnephew of Ives.
My review copy came with the Naxos American Classics Catalog,
a reminder of the impressive credentials which this series has
already established for itself. The quality of the current offering
is no exception. It prompts me to investigate Sinclair’s
other Ives recordings and several more works in the series which
I’ve missed out on.
Brian Wilson
see also review by Bob
Briggs
Malmö Symphony Orchestra and
Chamber Chorus/James Sinclair 
