Charles Ives Symphonies No.s 1 & 4

Charles Ives (1874-1954) was a late-Romantic composer with an important spiritual statement to make. His polyrhythms, "dissonance", etc, were only parts of the even more adventurous techniques he used in getting closer to the specific streams of mind and soul he sought to communicate the soul of America itself.
Symphony No. 1 in D minor, written between 1898 and 1902, is an example of how Ives synthesized ideas from composers who came before him. This symphony is composed in the late-Romantic European tradition, and is believed to contain many paraphrases from famous European pieces such as Tchaikovsky's Pathétique and Schubert's Unfinished symphonies and especially Dvořák's New World Symphony.
The Symphony No. 4 was written between 1910 and the mid-1920s. The symphony is notable for its multi layered complexity-typically requiring two conductors in performance-and for its large and varied orchestration. Combining elements and techniques of Ives's previous compositional work, this has been called "one of his most definitive works"; Ives' biographer, Jan Swafford, has called it "Ives's climactic masterpiece".