Prices shown exclude VAT. (UK tax is not payable for deliveries to United States.)
See Terms & Conditions for p&p rates. | |  | Bernstein conducts Gershwin & Ives
Introduction: Bernstein on Ives' Symphony No. 2 Recording Place & Date: Royal Albert Hall, London, June 1976 (American in Paris, Rhapsody in Blue, Unanswered Question) Congress Hall of the Deutsche Museum, Munich, June 1987 (Symphony no. 2) “An indispensable DVD. To watch Bernstein conduct these supreme masterpieces of American music is a joy and a privilege in itself...there is an authentically spontaneous command of idiom here; Bernstein is both a superb soloist and conductor in the Rhapsody and the New Yorkers respond in a proprietorial way.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition | | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
|
|
| |  | Ives - The Three Orchestral Sets
The works on this recording focus on a singular genre created by a singular composer. The kind of piece Charles Ives called a ‘set’ is usually a larger work made by putting together independently-written smaller pieces. The First Orchestral Set, variously titled Three Places in New England and A New England Symphony, is one of Ives’s great tributes to his roots. Put together around 1913-14 from material going back years, it is typically Ivesian in that each movement has an underlying program. Like the other sets, the Second has a slow-fast-slow pattern and a visionary hymn-based finale. The unfinished Third Orchestral Set was the only set Ives planned as a whole from the beginning. It may stand as the most profound discovery of the many and ongoing efforts to reconstruct Ives’s incomplete works. This is its first complete performance and recording “Well recorded, idiomatic performances all round - a real Ives discovery.” Gramophone Magazine, October 2008 “James Sinclair leads excellent performances. The Malmo Symphony sounds comfortable in the American idiom, and the recording is spacious, sweet sounding in the strings…You should have the Naxos regardless of what other Ives recordings you have.” American Record Guide “This is a fascinating release that offers Ives's three Orchestral Sets for the first time. The curtain is raised with the first of them, ThreePlaces in New England, in its original version – this stands somewhere between the CountryBand March and the later, more familiar ThreePlaces. At this stage there's no piano part and the conflicting march rhythm in 'Putnam's Camp' is missing as well as its dissonant opening. Both the First and Second Sets are vintage Ives, with his unforgettable reaction to the sinking of the Lusitania that brought the US into the First World War at the end of the Second Set.
But the novelty here is the Third Set. The first two movements come from sketches edited by David Gray Porter. The opening Andante has a structure similar to Central Parkin the Dark with typical Ives chords and a texture building to a crisis with something left hanging softly at the end. The second movement is called 'During Camp Meetin' Week: One Secular Afternoon'. This again is Ives's idiosyncratic territory with lots of quotations including 'Columbia the Gem of the Ocean' twice and a four-part hymn about the Day of Judgement – not so secular after all? Completing works by Ives has become an industry that the composer would have welcomed.
The perhaps over-extended last movement of this Third Set, realised by Nors Josephson, at times sounds like Varèse, although it begins and ends softly. Well recorded, idiomatic performances all round – a real Ives discovery.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010 | | | (also available to download from $6.00) | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
|
|
| |  | Ives - Romanzo di Central Park
“Gerald Finley has everything and more in his darkly full-bodied voice to match the often formidable technical and expressive requirements of Ives’s songbook—reinforced by Drake’s elastic, expressive piano … this is a must-buy album” The Times “This is a highly successful follow-up to Gerald Finley and Julius Drake’s first Ives recital from 2005. Here there is the same sort of mix, from familiar songs such as The Circus Band and Watchman! To an early requiem for the family cat and the intriguing title song, Romanzo (di
Central Park), with its obbligato violin part atmospherically played by Magnus Johnston. Finley is his usual charismatic self, at home as much in the hymnody as the parody, and he is careful not to over-sentimentalise the more homely numbers while injecting pathos into the war songs. Drake
projects Ives’s often complex accompaniments with clarity and style” The Telegraph “…outstandingly well sung and played, equally well recorded, and highly recommendable to all lovers of fine songs and fine singing.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2008 ***** “…some of the early songs in a conventional style are treated with the same seriousness that Finley would apply to Lieder. The contemplative ones are delivered with an impressive serenity and Finley has his own way of attacking the razzle-dazzle of something like "The Circus Band" or "They Are There!".” Gramophone Magazine, April 2008 “This is the second volume of Ives songs from this accomplished team; their first Ives volume (reviewed above) contained some of the blockbusters like Charlie Rutlage and General WilliamBooth but the mood of this volume is fairly sedate. In particular some of the early songs in a conventional style are treated with the same seriousness that Finley would apply to Lieder.
An unusual but effective feature here is the provision of violin obbligato both for the jingoistic wartime song They Are There! and the mawkish take-off Romanzo (di Central Park). Sentimentality is a Victorian characteristic but in Songs MyMother Taught Me, as elsewhere in Ives, the emotion is genuine so it invariably convinces.
Many of the songs are transposed down – hard work for the pianist and it makes some of the textures rather dense. The contemplative ones are delivered with an impressive serenity and Finley has his own way of attacking the razzledazzle of something like The Circus Band or TheyAre There! He's close-miked, which works best in the intimacy of the quieter songs.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010  BBC Music Magazine
Choral & Song Choice - March 2008 |
| | | In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day. |
|
|
| |
|
Penguin Guide
Gramophone Magazine
Gramophone Awards 2008