As part of Arcana’s 10th birthday celebrations, we invited our readers to contribute with some of their ‘watershed’ musical moments from the last 10 years.
David Gutman writes:
This is a peculiar time for music and politics but perhaps it’s been that way for longer than we think.
Christopher Rouse, my favourite ‘living composer’, has been dead since 2019 and is rarely played in the UK but we’re continuing to discover ‘new’ works by him online and on disc. Rouse began as an academic evangelist for rock music as it was understood in the 1970s but took his ‘classical’ calling seriously enough to take an unfashionable stand: “I’m not going to talk about rock ‘n’ roll any more. It doesn’t need my help. It’s not that I no longer like that music, but I feel the wagons have been circled, and I’m going to stick with my high-falutin’, élitist, dead white European male brethren and, if necessary, go down fighting.”
His Organ Concerto of 2014 appeared only last year in a Naxos collection of American Organ Concertos played by Paul Jacobs. The Rouse is the highlight, his usual wildly eclectic mix, only around 20-minutes in length and traditional in form but pugnacious in content, whether tonal or atonal. There is also drumming. Its central Lento, which hostile critics have already misheard as ‘sentimental’, is another of the composer’s heartfelt meditations on the nature and acceptance of grief. This matters as we age (this listener is 67 ½) while the finale’s return to consonance and affirmation despite noises off is not just for show. It moved me very much. Rouse wrote the piece ‘the old-fashioned way’ with pencil and paper, on a table.
You can listen to the whole piece on Tidal below – the Rouse is tracks 5 – 7:
Ives Four Ragtime Dances (1902-04, rev. 1916) Fugue in Four Keys on ‘The Shining Shore’ (c1903) The Pond (c1906, rev, c1912-13) The Rainbow (first version, 1914) An Old Song Deranged (c1903) Skit for Danbury Fair (c1909, real. Sinclair) The Gong on the Hook and Ladder or Fireman’s Parade on Main Street (c1911, rev. 1934) Chromâtimelôdtune (c1923, real. Singleton) Tone Roads – no.1 (c1913-14); no.3 (c1911/13-14) Set of Incomplete Works and Fragments (ed. Singleton/Sinclair, 1974) March no.2, with ‘Son of a Gambolier’ (c1892) March no.3, with ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ (c1893) March ‘The Circus Band’ (c1898-99, rev. 1932-33) Arrangements (1896-97) – Schubert: Marche militaire in D, D733 No. 1 (1818). Schumann: Valse noble, Op. 9 No. 4 (1834-35). Schubert: Impromptu in C minor, D899 No. 1 (1827)
Orchestra New England, Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra (arrangements) / James Sinclair
Naxos American Classics 8.559954 [75’43”] Editions John Kirkpatrick, Jacques-Louis Monod, James Sinclair, Kenneth Singleton and Richard Swift Producers Neely Bruce, Jan Swafford Engineers Benjamin Schwarz with Jonathan Galle and Gonzalo Noqué
Recorded 24/25 October 2023 at Auditorio Barañaín, Pamplona-Navarra, Spain (arrangements), 12-14 March 2024 at Colony Hall/Choate Rosemary Hall, Wallingford CT, USA
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Naxos continues its long-term series devoted to the orchestral music of Charles Ives with this volume of shorter pieces and arrangements, several of them recorded for the first time and conducted by James Sinclair, whose involvement with the composer now stretches back across 50 years.
What’s the music like?
Miniatures for a variety of forces are found right across the four decades of Ives’s composing and range from unformed experiments to perfectly realized exemplars of his idiom. Many of these were collated in the dozen or so Sets that Ives assembled at various stages in his career (recorded on Naxos 8.559917) while there are various others which resist any such compiling, and these can mostly be found here – often in critical editions prepared by a formidable team of Ives scholars, hence rounding out the picture of his creativity in the most immediate terms.
Written at the outset of the genre’s golden age, the Four Ragtime Dances neatly complement each other as regards form and content; elements from each finding their way into the second movement (The Rockstrewn Hills) from the Second Orchestral Set, which builds upon their anarchic humour accordingly. Following the shimmering polytonal ambivalence of the Fugue on ‘The Shining Shore’, the unworldly evocations The Pond and The Rainbow find Ives at his most intimate and confessional – as does the admittedly more genial An Old Song Deranged. Not so Skit for Danbury Fair, its inherent iconoclasm finding greater focus in the graphically descriptive The Gong on the Hook and Ladder or contrasting Tone Roads Nos. 1 and 3 which embody Ives’s thinking on indivisibility of life and music in the most uncompromising terms.
It was once thought Chromâtimelôdtune might be the missing Tone Road No. 2, yet this late and possibly incomplete piece is likely an acerbic response to the Modernism emerging from post-war Europe which seemingly preoccupied Ives in those twilight years of his composing. The three song-based Marches date from an earlier and ostensibly more carefree phase, their debunking couched in humorous terms, while the Set of Incomplete Works and Fragments is a judiciously conceived entity that should not have had to wait 50 years for its first recording. The orchestrations are from Ives’s study with Horatio Parker at Yale: that of Schubert’s First Marche Militaire and Schumann’s Valse noble (from Carnaval) are expert but anonymous, that of Schubert’s First Impromptu results in a ‘theme and variations’ of striking prescience.
Does it all work?
Yes, inasmuch that the effectiveness of these pieces largely depends on the conviction of their performers and, with Sinclair at the helm, this can be taken for granted. As can the excellence of Orchestra New England in repertoire it has often been playing for decades, and if Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra might appear an unlikely choice for Ives’s undergraduate arrangements, it acquits itself admirably. The sound throughout is unexceptionally fine, and Sinclair’s own annotations are succinctly informative as to the genesis and context of some intriguing music.
Is it recommended?
Indeed, this is a necessary addition to a valuable series – hopefully to be continued before too long with recordings of the Fourth Symphony and Universe Symphony as partially realized by David Porter, of which Sinclair gave a memorable account at the Aldeburgh Festival in 2012.
Listen & Buy
For buying options, you can visit the Naxos website – or listen to the recording on Tidal below:
Ives Set no.1 Set no.2 Set no.3 Set no.4: Three Poets and Human Nature Set no.5: The Other Side of Pioneering, or Side Lights on American Enterprise Set no.6: From the Side Hill Set no.7: Water Colors Set no.8: Songs without Voices Set no.9 of Three Pieces Set no.10 of Three Pieces Set for Theatre Orchestra
Naxos American Classics 8.559917 [68’17”]
Producer Kenneth Singleton Engineers Benjamin Schwartz, Jonathan Galle
Recorded 8-9 March 2022 at Colony Hall and Choate Rosemary Hall, Wallingford CT
Written by Ben Hogwood
What’s the story?
James Sinclair here continues his long-term Naxos project devoted to Charles Ives with this first complete release of the sets for chamber orchestra that the composer put together across two decades and several of which are only now receiving their first recordings in this guise.
What’s the music like?
While his contribution to such major genres as the symphony, piano sonata and string quartet can hardly be gainsaid, Ives was no less committed to the miniature – whether in terms of his c130 songs, or nearly 40 evocative vignettes that are collated here. As Sinclair points out, the first three of these sets emerged during the First World War so pre-date the songs which were derived from them, whereas those other seven drew retrospectively on Ives’s songs as well as revising numerous of the composer’s shorter pieces – including his most famous single work.
Those relatively familiar with Ives’s output will be aware of many of the pieces through other media, not least the still excellent When the moon collection which Richard Bernas recorded with Music Projects in the 1990s (Decca) and which remains available for download. The 16 items which became songs are included thus in estimable readings by soprano Susan Narucki or baritone Sanford Sylvian with pianist Alan Feinberg, though the merit in having these sets as an integral series is self-evident as to make it surprising this had not earlier been attempted.
That the first three sets are relatively well-known does not lessen the arresting quality of such items as Ives’ quirky take on a Yale processional which is Calcium Light Night (Set 1/No 5), sardonic elision of (in)famous people in Gyp the Blood’ or Hearst!? Which is Worst?! (2/2), or his stark directive to embrace the future in Premonitions (3/3) with its subsequent setting of Robert Underwood Johnson. The ensuing five sets (Nos. 4 and 8 are recorded here for the first time) each has a descriptive title with which to characterise its content, while the last two sets (again in their first recordings) emerged nearly a decade after Ives had effectively ceased original composition – but inclusion of a (definitive?) version of The Unanswered Question (9/3) and reappearance of Like a Sick Eagle (1/4 & 10/1) thereby brings the series full circle.
Also featured here is the Set for Theatre Orchestra that Ives assembled around the same time as the First Set, and whose individual items between them encapsulate three distinct facets of his mature idiom – being respectively ominous, uproarious and nostalgic in their expression.
Does it all work?
It does indeed. Taken overall this collection might be felt to represent the essential Ives – its diversity of contents allied to its economy of means comparable to the orchestral miniatures which Webern composed some years earlier, not least by their exuding comparable intensity of expression. It helps to have so attuned an Ivesian as Sinclair at the helm, who directs with precision and insight these pieces – many of which he, Kenneth Singleton and David Porter realized for performance. Both sound and annotations are fully on a par with these readings.
Is it recommended?
Very much so. This is the fifth volume of Ives which Sinclair has now recorded for Naxos and, whether the series is slated to run to eight or nine volumes, it is building into the most inclusive and reliable edition of the composer’s orchestral output that has so far been made.
Stream
Buy
For more information on this release and purchasing options, visit Naxos Direct. For more information on the conductor’s Ives discography, visit the James Sinclair page on the Naxos website
This week we have learned the sad news of the death of conductor David Lloyd-Jones, at the age of 87. David was instrumental in founding Opera North in 1978, and there is a heartfelt tribute on their websitein his honour.
While Lloyd-Jones was a highly respected opera conductor, I have chosen to focus on his many and pioneering recordings of English music by way of a tribute. These include extensive surveys of the orchestral music of Stanford (including a symphony cycle), Alwyn, Bliss, Rawsthorne and Arnold Bax, including another survey of his symphonies, and Holst – with an important disc of his orchestral music released in 1998. Here is just a hint of his discography for Naxos, with highlights from some very impressive recordings:
Bach Prelude and Fugue no.8 in E flat minor / D sharp minor BWV853, Prelude no.14 in F sharp minor BWV883; Fugues – no.1 in C major, BWV846; no.5 in D major, BWV874; no.21 in B flat major, BWV866; no. 22 in B flat minor BWV867 Beethoven Adagio cantabile Op.13/2 Chopin Waltz no.7 in C sharp minor Op.64/2 Massenet Élégie Op.10/5 Mendelssohn Lieder ohne Worte in E major Op.30/3 Rachmaninov Prelude in C sharp minor Op.3/2 Schubert Ständchen D957/3 Schumann Träumerei Op.15/7 Villa-Lobos Bachianas Brasileiras no.9 W449
São Paulo Symphony Choir / Valentina Peleggi
Naxos 8.574286 [58’32”] English and Portuguese translations included
Recorded: 5-10 August 2019 at Sala São Paulo, Brazil
Written by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Naxos’s coverage of the music of Heitor Villa-Lobos (part of this label’s series The Music of Brazil) continues with a selection of mainly transcriptions from the piano repertoire that the composer undertook during the mid-1930s as part of his extensive educational commitments.
What’s the music like?
Almost all these arrangements emerged in the period 1932-5, when Villa-Lobos took on the challenge of overhauling music education in the public school system of Rio de Janeiro. This involved the creation, virtually from scratch, of a choral pedagogy that he drew from across the spectrum of Baroque, Classical and Romantic music. It is a measure of his prowess that such transformation from mostly piano sources was accomplished with unfailing rigour and an idiomatic quality, so the fame of the originals is almost the only clue to their provenance.
From the soulful strains of among the most mellifluous from Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, the programme then continues with the Eighth Prelude and Fugue from the first book of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier – the former piece summoning a plangently rhetorical response which finds pertinent contrast with the latter piece’s methodical and intricate build-up to a culmination of sombre eloquence. The arrangement of Dreaming from Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood fully conveys its wistful pathos, as does that of the First Fugue from Bach’s WTC the original’s cool elegance. Similarly, the last of Schubert’s Serenade settings loses little of this song’s plaintiveness, and the Twenty-First Fugue from Bach’s WTC takes on unexpected jauntiness in what proves one of Villa-Lobos’s most inspiriting re-creations.
Chopin’s Waltzes might be considered unsuited to the vocal medium, yet the C sharp minor responds ably to such elaboration, as too the ruminative calm of the Twenty-Second Prelude from Bach’s WTC. Rachmaninov might have thought better of his Prelude in C sharp minor had he encountered this uninhibitedly dramatic realization, with basses providing the baleful anchorage, in contrast to the yearning aura drawn from the Fourteenth Prelude of the second book from Bach’s WTC. Massenet’s Elegy exceeds the original song for bittersweet poise, a foil to the serenity of the Fifth Fugue from Bach’s WTC. The indelible main melody from the Adagio of Beethoven’s Pathétique segues ideally into the Ninth Bachianas Brasileiras, with Villa-Lobos’s choral incarnation rather more atmospheric and evocative than that for strings.
Does it all work?
Almost entirely and due in no small part to the excellence of the São Paulo Symphonic Choir with its Italian conductor Valentina Peleggi. Lasting just under 60 minutes, the selection feels varied yet also cohesive enough to be enjoyed as a continuous programme, while enterprising choirs from both sides of the Atlantic ought to find much here to enrich their existing rosters. Inclusion of Villa-Lobos’s own music at the close is a reminder its technical demands should never be taken for granted, but here too the SPSC rises to the challenge with unstinting verve.
Is it recommended?
It is. The acoustic is just a little reverberant at times yet without detriment to the clarity of the choral writing, with informative annotations from Manoel Corrêa do Lago. Listeners should also investigate a recent Naxos release of Villa-Lobos’s first three violin sonatas(8.574310).
Listen
Buy
You can discover more about this release at the Naxos website, and you can also purchase the recording here. You can read more about conductor Valentina Peleggi here
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