In October 1918, Charles Ives suffered a heart attack
brought on by exhaustion and undiagnosed diabetes. This marked a turning
point in his career. As Ives’ biographer Jan Swafford points out, for
the remainder of his life, the primary focus of Ives’ musical efforts
would be promoting his works, rather than composing. The very first
work that he chose to show to the world—after fifteen years of nearly
absolute artistic isolation—was his Second Piano Sonata, subtitled Concord,
Mass., 1840-1860. Ives had a special regard for the work. He took
great measures to explain his aims in the Essays Before a Sonata,
a programmatic overview of the sonata that Ives included when he published
the work (at his own considerable expense) in 1921. In short, the sonata
is a series of meditations on four great Transcendentalist writers:
Emerson, Hawthorne, "The Alcotts," and Thoreau.
In Emerson, Ives finds "an invader of the unknown—America’s
deepest explorer of the spiritual immensities…" (Essays 11).
Ives also imagines Emerson as "a mountain guide so intensely on
the lookout for the trail of his star that he has no time to stop and
retrace his footprints…" (Essays 12). (Of course, Ives is
not only describing Emerson here; he’s describing his own music.) Turning
to the second movement, Ives tries to "suggest some of [Hawthorne’s]
wilder, fantastical adventures into the half-childlike, half-fairylike
phantasmal realms," rather than focusing on Hawthorne’s foremost
themes: sin and the conscience (Essays 42). The third movement
is Ives’ homage to domestic life, as represented by Bronson Alcott and
his family. The fourth movement is dedicated to Thoreau, who Ives describes
as "a great musician, not because he played the flute, but because
he did not have to go to Boston to hear ‘the Symphony’" (Essays
51). One other comment reveals Ives’ deep attachment to the Concord
Sonata. Many years after publishing the work, Ives remarked that
the sonata was his one work that never seemed finished; it was a perpetual
work in motion, a continual improvisation: "I don’t know as I shall
ever write [my improvisations] out, as it may take away the daily pleasure
of playing this music and seeing it grow and feeling that it is not
finished…I may always have the pleasure of not finishing it…" (Memos
80).
Appropriately enough, Philip Mead begins his wonderful
new collection of piano works by Ives with the Concord Sonata.
Comparing Mead’s reading to another fine recording of this work, by
Marc-André Hamelin on New World (NW 378-2), I find Mead’s reading
of the Emerson movement to be a shade less deliberate than Hamelin’s.
While Mead’s version may lack some of Hamelin’s Olympian, lightning
bolt-wielding power, he is perhaps more poetic and lyrical. But, as
fine as the first movement may be, Mead is even stronger in the second
movement. This reading captures the crashing, cacophonous rowdiness
of the Hawthorne movement better than any other that I’ve heard. Mead’s
pianism evokes the feeling of an amusement park ride that’s both hypnotically
scary and exciting; he makes Ives’ description of the piece as
"phantasmal" seem entirely appropriate. After the wild ride
of the Hawthorne movement, the third seems appropriately traditional
without ever being cloying or sentimental. The fourth movement is also
very fine. As in the first movement, Mead is especially adept at evoking
the finer, poetic elements in this surging, kaleidoscopic music. And
this recording, unlike Hamelin on New World, includes the "optional"
flute in the Thoreau movement. Stunning.
My only complaint about this recording of the Concord
Sonata is the recording itself. The music is marred by fairly muddy,
distant recorded sound. For example, the New World recording seems vastly
more open and detailed than the Metier recording. A pity. Nonetheless,
unless top-shelf sound is your highest priority, I heartily recommend
Mead’s reading of the Concord Sonata. And, given Ives’ remarks
about the never-ending, improvisational nature of this music, you should
probably hear more than one version of this work anyway. (I really wouldn’t
want to be without Hamelin as well!)
As for the other works on these discs, suffice it to
say that Mead’s readings of these works are also outstanding. While
I wouldn’t want to give up Joanna MacGregor’s recording of the First
Sonata (Collins 11072, no longer available), Mead’s is equally compelling—and
readily available. Even more compelling are Mead’s readings of the shorter
works. To my ears, these are the finest recordings of these works available,
easily surpassing Alan Mandel (on Vox CD3X 3034) and Donald Berman (on
CRI CD 811). Unfortunately, I must mention once again that the recording
itself is less-than-stellar (though they are better than the
Vox recordings).
So, if you’ve wanted to investigate Ives’ piano compositions,
Mead offers outstanding interpretations of all the major works, conveniently
collected in a two-disc set. The only "fly in the ointment"
is the sound quality. Aside from this caveat, this set is recommended
without reservation.
Scott Mortensen
References:
Essays Before a Sonata, The Majority, and Other
Writings. Edited by Howard Boatwright (Norton, 1999).
Charles E. Ives: Memos. Edited by John Kirkpatrick
(Norton, 1991).
Philip Mead, piano 