Melbourne SO/Davis
Charles Ives Orchestral Music
(Chandos)
THE second volume in Chandos’ survey of the orchestral music of Charles Ives is a stonker of a disc, surely a step forward in the appreciation of the originality of America’s greatest orchestral composer. Nope, I haven’t forgotten Copland, Barber and Bernstein, but to these ears none of them holds a candle to Ives in his ability to take the most familiar objects, from hymn tunes to patriotic marches, quicksteps and ragtime, and forge a spit-fresh musical idiom that, through to the elemental strands of its DNA, is exclusively American in its heritage and accent. As you can hear in this collection, wonderfully-played and directed with stupendous insight by Sir Andrew Davis, Ives’ music is at once direct, immediate and almost baffling in its density: that thesis applies throughout the big pieces, the Symphony: New England Holidays, and the Three Places in New England. The big works are buttressed by Ives’ best-known pieces, Central Park in the Dark and the philosophical essay, The Unanswered Question: breathtaking.
Michael Tumelty
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