Songs, Vol. 4

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CHARLES IVES
Songs, Vol. 4
Robert Gardner (baritone) Patrick Carfizzi (bass) Ian Howell (counter tenor) Sumi Kittelberger (soprano) Leah Wool (mezzo) Douglas Dickson (piano)

[ Naxos American Classics / CD ]

Release Date: Friday 10 October 2008

This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.

When, in 1922, Charles Ives published a volume entitled 114 Songs, he was indirectly drawing attention to the fact that the genre had played a central part in his output. 85 years on and, for all that his wider reputation rests on his orchestral, chamber and piano music, the songs still represent the heart of his creative thinking.

Nor was that initial volume comprehensive; Ives having written almost 200 songs, of which this present edition includes all of those he completed. The expressive variety encountered is accordingly vast: indeed, the gradual evolution of Ives's songwriting, from those which draw overtly on the Austro-German Lieder and English parlour-song tradition to ones that evince anarchic humour as keenly as others do profound vision, is analogous to the evolution of American music over the last quarter of the nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth centuries.

Although it would be possible to collate Ives's songs according to type, the alphabetic approach adopted by this edition ensures each volume (of which this disc is the fourth) offers a representative cross-section of his achievement. A wide range of poets is set, including a number of (mainly early) German settings as well as forays into French and Italian writers. The temporal distance (1887-1926) traversed by these songs is as little compared to their stylistic diversity or emotional range.

Tracks:

Majority
Maple Leaves
MarieMarie, `Marie, I see thee, fairest one, as in a garden fair'
Memories
Minnelied
Mirage
Mists I
My Lou Jennine
My Native Land I (1st version)
My Native Land I (2nd version)
My Native Land II
Nature's Way
Naught that country needeth
The New River
Night of Frost in May
A Night Song
A Night Thought
No More
Nov. 2, 1920, `An Election'
An Old Flame
Old Home Day
Omens and Oracles
On Judges' Walk
On the Antipodes
On the Counter
The One Way
The Only Son
Over all the treetops, `Ilmenau'
The Old Mother (Du alte Mutter) (1st setting)
My dear old mother (Du alte Mutter) (2nd setting)