‘This album is a demonstration of, and tribute to, the remarkable breadth of Charles Ives’ imagination. A composer of wide-ranging orchestral works, he was also a master of miniatures. Well-focused, short ideas were a perfect fit for Ives’ busy double life as an insurance executive and weekend composer. Many of his songs are strikingly brief and it is on these that the Sets for Chamber Orchestra are largely based. In those brief spans, however, Ives creates a breathtaking panoply of style and technique, possibly the greatest showcase of his kaleidoscopic creativity and the most colourful outings in all of his output.’
– James Sinclair
Charles IVES (1874–1954)
Complete Sets for Chamber Orchestra
Orchestra New EnglandJames Sinclair
WORLD PREMIERE RECORDING OF COMPLETE EDITION
Though Charles Ives wrote large-scale works, he also thrived on miniatures. Ives’ Sets for Chamber Orchestra are largely based on his songs and display a panoply of style and technique that proves to be among the most colorful and creative of his entire compositional life. The Sets are rife with allusions and borrowings, notably hymn tunes, and reuse several pieces in slightly altered treatments. Set 9 includes The Unanswered Question in its original form. Ives was willing to embrace substitution of instruments, and this recording contains premiere recordings of new realisations and editions.
‘Three Poets and Human Nature’
I. Robert Browning (Paracelsus)
James Sinclair is among the world’s pre-eminent scholars and champions of the music of Charles Ives. He is the executive editor for the Charles Ives Society, supervising the work of Ives scholars throughout the United States. He has served as music director for four PBS television documentaries, including the Peabody Award-winning film about Ives, A Good Dissonance Like a Man. In 1999, Yale University Press published his 800-page A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives. He has conducted the world premieres and first recordings of sixteen Ives works.
Malmö Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Chorus • Sinclair
– ClassicsToday.com
Symphony No. 1
Feinberg • National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland • Sinclair
– ClassicsToday.com
Malmö Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Chorus • Sinclair
– Gramophone
Washington’s Birthday and other works
Northern Sinfonia • Sinclair
– Gramophone