Charles Ives - Symphonies

Charles Ives (1874-1954)

The Symphonies; Orchestral Sets 1 & 2

2 discs; 22 tracks; 2 hours 38 minutes

Disc 1:

Symphony No. 1

Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra

Zubin Mehta

Symphony No. 4

Orchestral Set No. 2

The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus

Christoph von Dohnányi

Disc 2:

Symphony No. 2

Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra

Zubin Mehta

Symphony No. 3

Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields

Neville Marriner

Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. 1)

The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus

Christoph von Dohnányi

So here's the deal. Charles Ives was a BEAST of a composer, and I don't really hear much recognition towards that fact, to be honest. Even at school he's just acknowledged as an outsider figure who just grazed and pointed towards most 20th Century trends. "That old beardy dude who sort of tried out all the stuff we're doing much better now."

Here's the thing, though. Charles Ives, before going out and doing the amazing ground-breaking stuff he did with stuff like the Concord Sonata or the Fourth Symphony, displayed some mad traditional skills in works like his ultra-romantic First Symphony, which is a step most modern composers altogether skip nowadays, leaving it to speculation if they do in fact possess such mad skills.

I'll say no more, just that Ives is pretty much unparalleled in the art of quotation and motivic development of the quotations he used, and the Fourth Symphony is crazy good.

Download:

Disc 1

Disc 2