Information
Composer: Charles Ives
- Set No. 1
- Set No. 2
- Set No. 3
- Set No. 4 "Three Poets and Human Nature"
- Set No. 5 "The Other Side of Pioneering, or Side Lights on American Enterprise"
- Set No. 6 "From the Side Hill"
- Set No. 7 "Water Colors"
- Set No. 8 "Songs without Voices"
- Set No. 9 of 3 Pieces
- Set No. 10 of 3 Pieces
- Set for Theatre Orchestra
Orchestra New England
James Sinclair, conductor
Date: 2023
Label: Naxos
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From ditty to dirge, hymn to chaotic hurrah, Ives’s Sets for Chamber Orchestra are a treasure trove of riches in miniature, arguably best showcasing – of all his astonishing output – his prodigious imagination. This invaluable recording from pre-eminent Ives expert and conductor James Sinclair with Orchestra New England brings together, for the first time, the composer’s complete chamber sets, including premieres of several new editions and realisations by Sinclair.
Performed with exuberance alongside the Set for Theatre Orchestra, it’s a suitably discombobulating yet always clear and cohesive voyage into Ives’s singular music-philosophical mind. Ever practical, he was predisposed on many levels to value the sacred and secular community traditions which profoundly suffuse these sets as they do all his music.
In Ivesian parlance, a ‘set’ is a collection of independent pieces, put together under the sometimes loose and often enigmatic umbrella of a shared programmatic or musical character. Mining his own material, in keeping with his extensive borrowing of hymns, marching tunes and more, most of the constituent works here are based on his own songs. Some, too, recur in more than one guise, in effective homage to the flexible instrumentation of local theatre orchestras. Of many highlights, the four versions of ‘The Indians’ (Sets 2, 5, 8 and 10) are a cornucopia of invention: poignantly nostalgic and proudly defiant in illumination of Charles Sprague’s heartfelt poem. Set No. 9 is essential listening: it includes the original version of The Unanswered Question, whose ghostly unfolding points to Ives’s ever-underlying metaphysical expansiveness.
-- Steph Power, BBC Music Magazine
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Charles Ives (October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) was an American actuary, businessman, and modernist composer. He was amongst the earliest American composers to achieve recognition on a global scale. His experimentation foreshadowed many musical innovations that were later more widely adopted during the 20th century. Ives composed four numbered symphonies as well as a number of works with the word 'Symphony' in their titles. He left behind material for an unfinished Universe Symphony, which he was unable to complete after two decades. Ives also composed two string quartets and other works of chamber music.
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James Sinclair is an American classical conductor. He studied at Indiana University, taught at the University of Hawaii, then moved to New Haven, Connecticut in 1972, where he joined Yale University. Sinclair has been the Music Director of Orchestra New England from 1974 to the present. He was also music director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra from 1994 to 1995. Sinclair is notably a specialist in the music of Charles Ives. He has published A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives with the Yale University Press, and served as music director for a number of PBS documentaries about Ives.
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