Anyone who has heard
the excellent Rachmaninov cycle with
Stephen Hough will know what a blistering,
incisive contribution Andrew Litton
and this orchestra made towards the
success of that enterprise. Hyperion
obviously thought so, and went back
to tape this wonderful series of Ives
concerts. They have some strong competition
– of which more later – but there is
no doubt in my mind that these performances
represent all that’s best about American
orchestras and conductors, particularly
in their own music. There is an unbuttoned
passion, superb clarity of execution
- particularly the brass - and, above
all, a communication of spirit, probably
down to Litton’s passion for the music,
that just sweeps you along.
The discs really need
to be bought as a pair so the amazing
trajectory of Ives’ compositional style
can be fully appreciated. It’s interesting
that Hyperion couples 1 and 4, so that
anyone opting for that one disc will
get the polar juxtaposition of the student
work and the visionary maturity, which
is fine, but these pieces should really
be in chronological order so the growth
in technique and the development of
the daring and revolutionary aspects
of Ives’ writing are best displayed.
It’s easy to dismiss
the First Symphony as a party
game for your friends, a ‘guess-the-influence’
bit of fun. But Litton treats this work
with deadly seriousness and has obviously
lavished as much preparatory care on
it as one of the illustrious models
on which it is so clearly based. Yes,
it is what liner-note writer Jan Swafford
calls a ‘glorified homework assignment’
but the more I listen, the more I detect
signs of the Ives to come. Among the
many references to Brahms, Tchaikovsky
and, especially, Dvořák,
whose ‘New World’ lurks in every movement,
there is a great deal of harmonic daring
and thematic ingenuity. This is obviously
what rattled his Yale superiors but
it shows Ives really knew his music
and there are modulations that would
not have been out of place in
‘Tristan’. And what tunes Ives comes
up with! From the first movement’s opening
melody through every subsequent movement,
the themes are naggingly memorable,
an aspect Litton is happy to play to
the full, letting the orchestra enjoy
letting rip, especially in the rumbustious
finale, where all the main themes are
brought back together in a riot of brassy
marches. It is said that, as with other
composers’ juvenilia, Ives always retained
a fondness for this piece.
The Second Symphony,
essentially in the same late-Romantic
mould, shows Ives taking the Wagner
influence a stage further. All the same
ghosts are there, but the melodic material
is more overtly American and we begin
to detect the Ives to come, hymn tunes
rubbing shoulders with snippets of civil
war songs, patriotic marches and spirituals,
all wrapped up in a neo-European, richly
orchestrated cloak. Litton is as good
as any here, plenty of inner detail
emerging from the heavy textures, and
it’s good to report that he doesn’t
emulate his mentor Leonard Bernstein
in overdoing the great 11-note cluster
that ends the piece.
The Third Symphony
really takes us fully into the Ives
world of gospel hymns and his organ-playing
past. The three compact movements are
utterly replete with these references,
being subtitled ‘Old Folks Gatherin’’,
‘Children’s Day’ and ‘Communion’. This
last movement shows the most daring,
the complex polyphony and chromatic
side-slipping probably giving us a clue
as to how the young Ives used to improvise
at the organ during church services.
The Dallas strings really come into
their own here, with a richly upholstered
sheen and impeccable intonation.
The Fourth Symphony
is the most radical of the four numbered
works and nothing that has gone before
quite prepares you for the shock. After
the heroic initial theme, deep in the
lower orchestra, we move into a world
that Ives himself describes as ‘a cosmic
world ... the questions of What? and
Why? which the spirit of man asks of
life. The three succeeding movements
are the diverse answers in which existence
replies’. This is the world of the later,
unfinished Universe Symphony and
The Unanswered Question, where
cacophonous clusters worthy of Ligeti
collide with hymn tunes such as ‘Nearer
my God to Thee’ and ‘From Greenland’s
icy mountains’. Such is the complexity
that two conductors are often required,
as here, and the whole amazing sound-world
really encapsulates Ives, both musically
and philosophically. Indeed, as Swafford
relates in the note, Ives felt that
music really could summon up ‘a vision
higher and deeper than art itself’.
The Fourth Symphony strikes me as the
truest exemplar of that vision and it
receives here a performance fully up
to the high standards of previous generations
of American conductors and orchestras,
richly detailed yet striking the right
balance between controlled abandon and
visionary apotheosis. Sit back and let
it wash over you!
The two fillers are
also quintessential Ives, one vastly
more famous than the other. Central
Park in the Dark has had many
excellent recordings over the years,
but Litton’s really is beautifully graded,
tense, atmospheric and superbly played.
General William Booth
enters into Heaven is a riotous
setting of a poem by Vachel Lindsay,
originally for voice and piano but later
arranged by Ives’ colleague John J.
Becker for baritone, choir and orchestra.
It emerges as a quirky little cantata
that evokes what Swafford calls ‘the
frenzied tent revivals that continue
in ‘charismatic’ circles to this day’.
It brilliantly illustrates Ives’ fondness
and skill in mingling comic and sublime,
earthly and spiritual as we follow General
Booth, founder of the Salvation Army,
beating his big drum as he leads his
parade of drunks and reprobates into
the Promised Land. The massed forces,
here fronted by Donnie Ray Albert, clearly
have a great time without losing sight
of Ives’ higher purpose.
So, an excellent pair
of discs, well filled and beautifully
recorded with virtually no audience
intrusion. The competition is limited
but strong, with the field in my view
being led by Michael Tilson Thomas,
whose re-issued three-disc set is retailing
for around a tenner, astonishing value.
Those Sony recordings have the numbered
symphonies, together with the Holidays
Symphony, Central Park in the
Dark and two versions of The
Unanswered Question. In many ways
it represents the ideal Ives collection
and still sounds extremely well, with
superb contributions from the Chicago
Symphony and Concertgebouw. However,
I feel Litton shades it, mainly because
of the continuity and subsequent intensity
of the concert scenario, where orchestra,
conductor and audience seemed to submit
to the Ives experience, something we
are privileged to be able to also share.
Tony Haywood
Dallas Symphony Chorus and Orchestra/Andrew Litton
for
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