Ives: Three Places in New England; Ruggles: Sun-treader

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
You'll probably find this filed under Charles Ives, since his Three Places in New England leads off the disc. However, while that's enough to recommend the disc, it's the music of Ruggles and Seeger that deserve our attention here. Ruggles (1876-1971) was a contemporary of Charles Ives and as much of an experimenter. He pursed atonality more directly than Ives, as in Sun-Treader (1935), much to his credit. Seeger (mother of Pete Seeger) is also a much-neglected American Modernist, and her Andante for Strings just isn't enough here. I highly recommend all this music. --Paul Cook

Tracks:

Three Places In New England: The 'St. Gaudens' in Boston Common
Putnam's Camp, Redding, Connecticut
The Housatonic at Stockbridge
Orchestral set no.2: An Elegy to our Forefathers
The Rockstrewn Hills Join in the People's Outdoor Meeting
From Hanover Square North....
Sun-treader
Men
Lilacs
Marching Mountains
Andante for strings

Amazon.com

You'll probably find this filed under Charles Ives, since his Three Places in New England leads off the disc. However, while that's enough to recommend the disc, it's the music of Ruggles and Seeger that deserve our attention here. Ruggles (1876-1971) was a contemporary of Charles Ives and as much of an experimenter. He pursed atonality more directly than Ives, as in Sun-Treader (1935), much to his credit. Seeger (mother of Pete Seeger) is also a much-neglected American Modernist, and her Andante for Strings just isn't enough here. I highly recommend all this music. --Paul Cook

Customer Reviews:

American Iconoclasts.......2002-10-04

This is a wonderful CD with powerful, committed performances of works by some of the most forward thinking composers this country has ever produced. And while there is alot of competition for the Ives Orchestral sets on the disc, the Ruggles and Crawford Seeger are relative rarities and make this a disc to treasure.

The ives Orchestral Sets lead off the disc, and they are great performances. Of the two, the First Set is the more familiar. St. Gaudens is a lovely study in atmospherics, in Ives typical blend of Imressionism, quotation, polytonatlity and shimmeringly atonal chords. Putnam's Camp is one of Ives' cacaphonous marches, littered with quotes from patriotic songs and the effects of several bands playing at once. This piece in particular seems almost a study for the stunning 2nd movement of the 4th symphony. The Set concluded with the justly celebrated Housatonic at Stockbridge. Slowly, out of the dense polyphony of the opening, a hymn tune gradually emerges in a blazing glory. Ives proves a master of impressionistic sound painting, but you never confuse him with his French counterparts...or even those like Griffeths or Delius, who are influenced by the French so highly. Ives take Impressionist gestures and makes them his own.

The Second Set is less well known, but equally striking. The Elegy to our Forefathers is dominated by beautiful and unusual instrumental timbres, including the harpsichord. It is a lovely, well shaped work. The Rockstrewn Hills is another of Ives' Camp Meeting pieces. Similar in ways to General Putnam, but this time using American Revival Hymns, the work is powerful and individual. The work finishes with Hanover Squart North, which features a significant choral part in the misdst of Ives' typical murky textures. The work undulates through these mists before it finally shines forth in a glorious brass band climax before it recedes again into murk.

Carl Ruggles has been severly neglected by the CD era. In the early 80s, Michael Tilson Thomas put out a double LP containing all of the work of this cranky yet brilliant composer, but this recording has been lost in the rush to CD technology. As a result, there are only a handful of Ruggles pieces to found in the catalogue. Luckily, one is the Sun Treader, which is probably Ruggles greatest piece of music. The work is tightly constructed around a strong repeated timpani stoke, and built of hard lines in uncompromising dissonant counterpoint. Ruggles music is like granite, chiseled and hard, yet strangely moving. The Sun Treader is only 14 minutes long, and yet it packs more in those 14 minutes than many composers pack into entire symphonies.

Men and Mountains is a slightly earlier piece. It shares the same strong, chiseled quality, but the counterpoint is not quite as highly developed. Lilacs in particular is a wonderful movement. Quiet and written for strings alone, this movement builds a tense chorale like texture, that increases in tension without exploding. The effect is stunning.

The Crawford Seeger Andante for Strings is also an undiscovered masterpiece. Crawford Seeger was one of the most radical composers of her generation, embracing the logic and atonality of the 2nd Viennese school during the time most Americans were under the spell of Boulanger and Stravinsky. This small work is a great introduction to this negelcted composer.

The Cleveland Orchestra under Dohnanyi is marevelous in this material, rivalling the Tilson Thomas Set with the BSO. This CD gets a slight edge for me, because of Men and Mountains and the Seeger Andante. It is outstanding.

The suntreader rages........1999-10-11

This is an amazing work, powerful and burning. Everyone should get a chance to listen to Ruggles' greatest work.

Ives: Three Places in New England, Ruggles: Sun Treader, etc.

Average customer rating:

Quintessential Ives, Ruggles, Piston, and MTT
win some, lose some

Ives: Three Places in New England, Ruggles: Sun Treader, etc.

Manufacturer: Deutsche Grammophon
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Similar Items:

The Uncovered Ruggles
Ives: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4/Hymns

ASIN: B000056TKF
Release Date: 2001-05-08

Tracks:

Three Places In New England (An Orchestral Set): I. The 'St. Gaudens' In Boston Common (Col. Shaw And His Colored Regiment)
Three Places In New England (An Orchestral Set): II. Putnam's Camp, Redding, Connecticut
Three Places In New England (An Orchestral Set): III. The Housatonic At Stockbridge
Sun-treader: (Beat) = 69 Poco accelerando (Bar - Takt - Measure 1)
Sun-treader: Tempo (Beat) = 126 (Bar 51a)
Sun-treader: Lento (Bar 119)
Sun-treader: A Tempo (Bar 138a)
Sun-treader: (Beat) = 69 Poco accelerando (Bar 169)
Sun-treader: Serene, But With Great Expression (Bar 191)
Symphony No. 2: Moderato
Symphony No. 2: Adagio
Symphony No. 2: Allegro

Amazon.com

Originally recorded in 1970, this is a welcome reissue of superb performances by the young Michael Tilson Thomas in his Boston Symphony days. The Ives is one of his best-known pieces and the crack orchestra plays it to the hilt. Ruggles's Suntreader is the work of another American loner, full of stark contrasts and uninhibited sound explorations--with a brass and percussion opening that'll make you sit up. Piston is often written off as an academic craftsman but his Second Symphony, like most of his works, makes such stereotyping patently absurd. He may not have been as idiosyncratic as Ruggles or Ives, but he was a creative composer whose poised, warmly gracious music should be better known. The three-movement Second Symphony is typical Piston in its classic framework, well-molded melodies and orchestration, and the way it slides effortlessly between the lyrical and the dramatic. It's hard to imagine better performances of these important American works. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews:

Quintessential Ives, Ruggles, Piston, and MTT.......2004-08-09

I must confess a bit of biographical prejudice in reviewing this disc. It was the original DG LP incarnation of the Ives included here--"Three Places..."--and its Ruggles discmate "Sun Treader" that opened my eyes to both composers back in high school. That worn library copy, with its glorious DG sonics captured in Boston Symphony Hall in the early '70's, was returned overdue more than a few times. I'd investigated it hot on the heels of seeing MTT conduct the Ives on one of the New York Philharmonic's "Young People's Concerts" televised by CBS, a series which Thomas took over from the departing Leonard Bernstein. Hearing MTT and the BSO on the LP confirmed what I'd learned from the television presentation, and the Ruggles companion piece gave me yet another foothold in 20th century American music.

While MTT doesn't really enjoy the comparisons, it would be less than truthful to say that not a little of Lenny's knack with American symphonic writing, as well as the barely-controlled histrionics of Gustav Mahler, rubbed off on him during their professional association in the '60's and '70's. And, even today, you can see it with Thomas's growing cycle of Mahler symphony performances with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Ives' and Mahler's contemporary popularity owe more than a little to Bernstein's advocacy, and it's this tradition that MTT falls into. Likewise, one must admit that he often surpasses his mentor.

While Ives was often quite specific in his musical notation and verbal playing instructions, he also encouraged performers to explore the implied "possibilities" of the piece. To understand Ives is to understand musical Americana. Charles Ives, growing up in Danbury, CT, in the late Victorian era under the tutelage and example of his bandmaster-father George Ives, absorbed several American music traditions: traditional hymnody and choral music, small-town brass bands with their often-times less than perfect pitch and ensemble, and the omnipresent European-based symphony orchestra with its established expressive vocabulary. These traditions, focused and remolded under the spell of New England Transcendentalism as expressed in the writings of Emerson and others, become the key ingredients of the Yankee musical "stew" which is quintessential Ives. Therein lies his genius, something which MTT understands deeply.

The turgid, brooding orchestral color of "The 'St. Gaudens' in Boston Common," the incredible mix of Fourth of July pomp and a schoolboy's daydreaming that make up "Putnam's Camp," and the wistful yet powerful evocation of the newlywed Ives couple's walk along "The Housatonic at Stockbridge," all receive their due here in a performance that I return to again and again with pleasure. The added bonus, of course, is the recorded sound, coming as it does from a vintage period of recordings made by DG at Boston Symphony Hall, the acoustic of which can become an ambient swamp if not as successfully managed as it is here. Contrary to an earlier reviewer's remarks, MTT truly "gets" Ives; one only has to hear that moment in "Housatonic" when the swirling string textures give way to the introduction of the "Contented River" theme, one of the most magical moments in all of American symphonic literature. I've never heard another performance match it.

The Ruggles "Sun Treader," as thorny and imposing an opus as one can find, offers equal rewards in MTT's hands, again with the BSO's performance on its home turf yielding major dividends. Ruggles was strongly championed by Thomas, an effort which resulted in a multi-disc LP set of Ruggles' complete works recorded with the Buffalo Philharmonic by CBS/Sony which has yet to see the light of day on CD, a travesty both for collectors and fans of this important American voice. "Sun Treader," the title of which is drawn from Robert Browning's tribute to Percy Shelley, draws its inspiration not from the latter (Ruggles had absolutely no interest in Shelley), but from Browning's verbal imagery...think of a titan's thunderous striding--tympany strokes--across a landscape of barely-contained orchestral movement. Browning, like Emerson, was also an interest of Charles Ives; perhaps a new recording by MTT and the San Francisco Symphony of "Sun Treader," coupled with the Ives "Robert Browning Overture," might by suggested by the A&R folks at BMG/RCA? Sometimes these things just suggest themselves.

Coming at the close of the present disc, the Piston Symphony #2 represents a somewhat less craggy musical lineage. Maine native Walter Piston achieved an almost Italianate elegance in his marriage of New England economy and French musical training. Within the symphony there is warmth, heart, reason, civility, all energetically presented by MTT in the present performance. A fitting finale, then, to a wonderful reissue by DG of spendid readings of 20th century American masterpieces.

win some, lose some.......2003-03-24

Tilson Thomas has done a fine job in rendering the demanding music of Ruggles and his reading of the Piston is well done. His Ives, however, is lacking. The orchestra, a superb orchestra as any, plays this music as if they just don't get it. Is it some notes, wanting to be free of the page or is it the job at hand? Who knows? The pacing, tempi and *feel* of the work in the second movement is hurried. Compare this to the later versions recorded by the conductor's mentor, L. Bernstein and FEEL the difference; the pacing, the ensemble sound, the sense of narrative and imagination. I can only wonder also of the difficulty and choices in recording this ensemble for the Ives as well; I suspect that a more unorthodox solution was needed and no one figured it out! This is why recording orchestras is such a challenge for anyone attempting such. For the Ives, I recommend Bernstein if not another version for this piece. I rate this 4 stars only for the Piston and Ruggles, which are better rendered and good examples of their work.

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