published by Ben Hogwood, with text appropriated from the press release

Nonesuch Records releases Jeremy Denk’s Ives Denk on October 18. The pianist, known as a champion of Charles Ives, is acclaimed for his performances of the great American composer’s works. Ives Denk, released in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Ives’ birth, features the composer’s four violin sonatas, performed with violinist Stefan Jackiw, as well as remastered versions of his Sonatas No. 1 and 2 for piano, from Denk’s 2010 debut recording, Jeremy Denk Plays Ives. ‘In the Barn’, the second movement of Sonata No. 2 for violin and piano, is available to download and can be listened to here:

In his liner note, Denk says that Ives’ “deepest dream was to create an original musical style, a fresh and uniquely American voice. He achieved this. But it was a voice most didn’t want to hear, and still don’t. He is one of history’s least popular populists … Ives’ writing – especially the later ones, when he was in terrible physical decline – are… often unhinged with anger, full of mean-spirited nicknames and simplistic binaries, they reflect some of the worst angles of America. One thing that saves Ives’ music from these dangers is his sense of humour, and his willingness to embrace failure.”

“If there is one piece that sums up for me Ives’ difficult virtues, it is the slow movement of the first violin sonata, a jagged musical reflection on the Civil War, so eerily relevant now, with America split into red-blue madness. It is interesting to compare this kind of piece, profound yet unloved, with the far more identifiably American voice of Aaron Copland … Ives is optimistic but always messy, always falling apart at the seams. His music suggests America will just have to muddle through, and wrestle with its own failure. At this particular historical moment, Ives seems to be more right than ever.”

“‘In the Barn’ is a joyful disaster,” Denk says of the second sonata movement, above. “It starts with country fiddling, slips slyly into urban ragtime, and as time passes, every imaginable genre makes a cameo – overheated Wagnerian Romanticism, fashionable exoticism, a dizzying tour of the early twentieth century musical world.”

Ives / Denk will contain the following repertoire:

Violin Sonata no.4 ‘Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting’
Violin Sonata no.3
Violin Sonata no.2
Violin Sonata no.1
Piano Sonata no.1
Piano Sonata no.2 ‘Concord, Mass., 1840-1860’

Published post no.2,277 – Wednesday 21 August 2024