Ives Concord Sonata, Piano Sonata No. 2 - Donald Berman (2024)
Charles Ives was a successful businessman who never tried to make a living as a composer. But compose he did, and while most people had never heard of him even by the time of his death in 1954, there’s been a gradual realization that Ives’ work was original, important, and in many ways far ahead of its time.
Officially called “Concord, Mass., 1840–1860,” the sonata No 2 is one of Ives’ most memorable achievements. Each movement is inspired by a different figure in the 19th century Transcendentalism movement, one of the US’s most important contributions to philosphy and spirituality if you ask me.
Like a lot of Ives’ work, the music contains quotes from the European greats as well as the church music and popular tunes he grew up with. Far from being pastiche, though, Ives add his own flavor in the form of unexpected harmonic ideas and a sort of chopped-and-screwed aesthetic.
He also prefigures more brash modernists like John Cage by scoring the work so that the pianist has to make her own choices in how to create the sound of what’s on the page. Some parts have no barlines defined, giving the artist more freedom on how to approach the dense chords. Other parts instruct to the musician to play with closed fists, the palm of the hand, or by pressing down wooden blocks over the keys. The wiki page quotes an interview piece explaining:
[Ives] said that he intended to give only a general indication to the pianist, who should, in his turn, recreate the work for himself
For this recording, we hear the performance by Berman, a lifelong scholar on Ives and the president of the Ives Society. You might hear a different version and get a very different view of what the piece is “about,” but Berman does a nice job of balancing his own ideas with what Ives had intended.
