Ives: Symphony No. 2; Robert Browning Overture

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Don't let the budget label, little-known conductor, and regional orchestra fool you--here's an outstanding disc of important music, brilliantly interpreted and played. Even if you have the grand, but cut, old Leonard Bernstein performance of the symphony on Sony, this one's different. Naxos uses a new critical edition replete with changes in tempo, dynamics, and orchestration. The symphony may be the funniest in the repertory, flinging wildly disparate folk and pop tunes together in imaginative ways that defy rhyme or reason, yet make perfect sense in the context of Ives's innovative soundworld. The Robert Browning Overture is no mere curtain-raiser, but one of Ives's toughest works, moving from a mysterious opening in the strings to braying brass and pounding drums. This is one of the best releases in Naxos's outstanding American Classics series. Don't miss it. --Dan Davis

Tracks:

Robert Browning Overture
Symphony No. 2: I Andante moderato
Symphony No. 2: II Allegro
Symphony No. 2: III Adagio cantabile
Symphony No. 2: IV Lento maestoso
Symphony No. 2: V Allegro molto vivace

Amazon.com

Don't let the budget label, little-known conductor, and regional orchestra fool you--here's an outstanding disc of important music, brilliantly interpreted and played. Even if you have the grand, but cut, old Leonard Bernstein performance of the symphony on Sony, this one's different. Naxos uses a new critical edition replete with changes in tempo, dynamics, and orchestration. The symphony may be the funniest in the repertory, flinging wildly disparate folk and pop tunes together in imaginative ways that defy rhyme or reason, yet make perfect sense in the context of Ives's innovative soundworld. The Robert Browning Overture is no mere curtain-raiser, but one of Ives's toughest works, moving from a mysterious opening in the strings to braying brass and pounding drums. This is one of the best releases in Naxos's outstanding American Classics series. Don't miss it. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews:

Exquisite.......2007-04-10

After having gotten familiar with Bernstein's old DG recording of the Second Symphony with the typically over-inflated playing he coaxes out of his orchestras, Schermerhorn's take presented me with a very refreshing, clean interpretation.

Maybe not the most "exciting" recording of the piece ever made, but I think it captures the essence of the piece more than Bernstein's passionate patriotism and conducting ever did. All the massive climaxes are plenty massive, anyway, the beautiful parts beautiful, and the playing is spectacular and sparkles with a restrained but innocent enthusiasm, which sounds more "right," more "American," even, to me than Bernstein's rather heavy-handed passion.

I am particular happy with the Symphony; the Overture is a curiosity that is well-documented here but is definitely harder to listen to. If nothing else, it prompts a new view of Ives as not just a "primitive" or a "home-grown" American composer, but a serious musician who was not afraid of experimentation or critics (due to income from a successful insurance company). Bernstein seems to have the wrong view of the man in general, as is evidenced by his essays in his recording and his recording itself.

Anyway. An excellent recording. If I had to get only one Ives Second, I would pick this one. I have since done away with Bernstein, the "usual" choice. If the Robert Browning Overture turns you off, just know that this was the man who said, "Sit down and take your dissonance like a man." If you can do that, it is well-worth it.

opposite ends of the spectrum for Ives.......2005-03-19

The Robt Browning Overture is really an invitation to explore to project differing densities of rhythm polyrhythms,usually,well here over the constant sixteenth notes running in the piano. The strings often ask questions in Ives,quasi-atonal,and also jut and strut outward with unprepared dissonance,ghastly stuff for academia. The fact that Ives was generally ignored in academia for many years until the late Sixties was detestable.(Leonard Bernstein on his TV Shows actually devoted one to Ives).Ives' fascination with literature needs no explanation as his philosophic scourings through the Transcendentalists, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Emerson, and the Alcotts Family,sort of a social associative magnet in Concord,Massachusetts. Browning's words and imagery had that "rugged" powerengaged with nature and questions; Ives liked; like his powerful rough,unfinished-like music itself, all within classical shapes,as Browning's poetry,all within the comfort zonesof the time, late romanticism and not,outward looking to innovation of what the mind can tell us, what the mind can hold like a reservoir to be expunged at points during creativity.
The Browning Overture you might say is overdetermined, there is everything happening simultaneously,the orchestral frame is overburdened here;andit is impossible to really hear everything down on score,so there is an element of Utopie here to contemplate,or you might say Ives was an amateur orchestrator.Well he could have done with a few lessons,for he areally never gets beyond a romantic conception of timbremhe was for instance much more advanced in terms of textural density usage as his contemporaries that he knew little as Mahler or Schoenberg or Stravinsky; this is perhaps that Ives heard little of live performances of his creations,certainly not orchestral pieces.So there is a 'short circuit' between pen,mind and inner ear, what the "eye" sees is not really what is heard. . . He did however vividly recalled(as a teenager) the timbral experiments of his father George,(a Civil War Bandmans Leader) who would for instance never tune his piano(s), and had several he owned all with differing states of tuning.Or instigate a performance of two bands playing simultaneously two different tunes, on rooftops, so for some antiphonal content.Also working with quarter tones.
The "Second Symphony" is far from this and inhabits Ives' comfort zone,like Ives,more advanced than here-First Piano Sonata-,these are works that came to terms,-actually saying good-bye -to what was;here with quotations abounding the textures,quatations are suppose to "suggest" different places, like it is "pieces" from the real world, like opening up an old wood trunk in the attic, it reminds, and it halts the flow of subjectivity, or for Ives he would say it is an integral part of his subjectivity.For it must end, one's creativity and where the materials impart themselves within one. We have nice predictable melos here in the Second Sym. in the violins of course.There is litytle innovative means here in rhythm or timbre.Although you can see how Ives wherever he was situated looked outward,not as graphic or obvious here. The progression of the symphony foments to the end where we have a rousing finish much like the high social energy at a picnic where baseball was played with a brass band a few yards away.

Ives as basic repertoire.......2005-03-04

This superb recording is Charles Ives as basic American repertoire; post-Brahmsian, late-Romantic, willfully unsophisticated in tone - which of course is partly a ruse. The baton is removed from superstars like Tilson Thomas & Bernstein & their uptown orchestras & handed to Kenneth Schermerhorn, who has made a career out of whipping downtown regional orchestras into shape. I firmly believe Ives had this kind of performance in mind: The Nashville Symphony in a time when all good professional musicians could get a handle on him.

The new score opens up space & lets air into the dense work (although one wonders, after hearing "Ives Plays Ives," if Charlie intended any of his scores to be definitive). The jokes are allowed to speak for themselves - Bernstein telegraphed them - as parodies of parlor piano & village bands. The performance has the feel of familiarity, care & sincerity. I really like it! Donald Johanos pulled off something similar over thirty years ago, recording "Holidays" with the Dallas Symphony for Turnabout, but the timing was premature.

The Robert Browning Overture, one of Ives' most challenging & best compositions, is finessed like an early something by Schoenberg, with whom Ives shared not only a genuine spirituality, but also a similar frustration with & puzzlement over the future of tonality. It's too bad Ives - an exact contemporary of Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Ravel & Vaughan Williams - refused to participate in the broader cultural scene of his era. Perhaps that would have ruined him. We'll never know.

A Minority View.......2004-04-24

I regret to say that some of the earlier, less enthusiastic entries in this sequence of customer reviews more accurately convey the impact of this recording. The orchestra displays technical competence, but is far too restrained to convey the raw excitement Ive's Second Symphony deserves. Even the famous finale comes across as disjointed, even a bit wooden.

As for the Browning Overture, it may be there to justify the usual description of the Second Symphony as being accessible. Next to this dark composition, Hegelian metaphysics and quantum mechanics seem accessible. You definately don't want to play this one on the way to work on Monday morning.

Ive's Second Symphony is one of America's greatest musical treasures and belongs in every music lover's collection. This performance might make a fine second or third version to have on hand, but, if you are going to have only one performance, this shouldn't be it.

Charles Ives -- "Hard" and "Soft".......2003-05-22

Charles Ives (1874-1954) wrote music in an American idiom incorporating American folk tunes and spirituals. He had the ambition that compositions of this nature would find a receptive audience. Ives also composed what remains some of the most difficult, modernistic music of the 20th Century, notable for its atonality, dissonance, and polyrhythm. It is a challenge to hear and to perform. Ives, or course, hoped for an audience for this music as well, while realizing its experimental "hard" character. Much of Ives's music combines both the "hard" and the "soft" elements.

The CD discussed here includes one work by Ives at his "hardest" -- the Robert Browning Overture and a work by Ives at his most accessible -- the Symphony No. 2. The disc is part of the Naxos "American Classics" series. The music is beautifully performed using an updated critical edition by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra directed by Kenneth Schermerhorn and is available at a bargain price.

Ives intended the "Robert Browning Overture" as part of a larger, never-completed project devoted to the work of famous authors. The work is based on Browning's poem "Paracelsus" and for me captures some of the mysterious spirit of alchemy and of the perils of trying to bring entirely nature under human control. The work runs about 25 minutes and alternates muted, mystical music with a loud march-like theme full of dissonances. The brass blares, the strings are shril, and the tympani plays an incessant boom -boom in the backround. Some of this music reminded me of a sophisticated version of Dukas's Sorcerer's Apprentice. Ives became dissatisfied with this piece late in his life apparently because he found it excessively formal. I found myself enjoying this music and thought it held together well.

Ives's second symphony has been well-described as the first real American symphony. He composed it between 1902 and 1910 although the work was not performed until 1951. The work is in five movements and is most notable for its incorporation of American folk songs, revival hymns, college anthems, Steven Foster tunes, and other such distinctive American material. There also are hints of late European romantic composers. The materials are woven together seamlessly in a gentle work with an unmistakably American flavor. In this symphony, I think Ives both captured and created an American form or Art music very much in the way Walt Whitman captured and created an American poetry. It is unfortunate that this work waited so long for recognition.

In his biography "Charles Ives: A Life with Music" Jan Swafford discusses the musical quality of this symphony and of its immediate successor, Ives's Symphony No. 3, noting that "With these two symphonies Ives created single-handedly, the nationalistic art music for which Dvorak had called and a good many American composers attempted without success. Rather than trying to cash in on that accomplishment, Ives moved on. ... His goal was never in the direction of what he would denounce as 'the old medieval idea of nationalism.' Local color to him was a means not an end." (Stafford, p. 158)

This disc will introduce the listener to Ives both hard and soft.
With its recent companion disc on Naxos, which features the Third Symphony, the listener will be able to enjoy and understand Ives's efforts in creating an American symphonic music.

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