Charles Ives - Piano sonatas 1 and 2 - René Eckhardt

Ives' Piano Sonata No. 1 consists of the following five movements:

Like the Second Orchestral Set, the First Piano Sonata is underrated, compared to its more popular sibling. According to Swafford's biography of Ives, the First Piano Sonata was the second of Ives' "orphans." These were works with which Ives was never satisfied and which he eventually abandoned. (The other "orphan" was the Robert Browning Overture.) But don't let that fool you. This is a tremendous sonata. Sure, it doesn't scale the heights of the "Concord." But what does?

Ives assembled and revised the Piano Sonata No. 1 "as late as 1919" (according to Sinclair) from works composed circa 1901 to 1909.


Ives' Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass., 1840-60, consists of the following four movements:
* i. Emerson
* ii. Hawthorne
* iii. The Alcotts
* iv. Thoreau

In October 1918, Charles Ives suffered a heart attack brought on by exhaustion and undiagnosed diabetes. This marked a turning point in his career. As Ives' biographer Jan Swafford points out, for the remainder of his life the primary focus of Ives' musical efforts would be promoting his works, rather than composing. The very first work that he chose to show to the world–after fifteen years of nearly absolute artistic isolation–was his Second Piano Sonata, subtitled Concord, Mass., 1840-1860.

Ives had a special regard for the work. He took great pains to explain his aims in the Essays Before a Sonata, a programmatic overview of the sonata that Ives included when he published the work (at his own considerable expense) in 1921. In short, the sonata is a series of meditations on four great Transcendentalist writers: Emerson, Hawthorne, "The Alcotts," and Thoreau.

One other comment reveals Ives' deep attachment to the Concord Sonata. Many years after publishing the work, Ives remarked that the sonata was his one work that never seemed finished; it was a perpetual work in motion, a continual improvisation: "I don't know as I shall ever write [my improvisations] out, as it may take away the daily pleasure of playing this music and seeing it grow and feeling that it is not finished…I may always have the pleasure of not finishing it…" (Memos 80).

Composition History
Ives assembled / recomposed the Piano Sonata No. 2 circa 1915, based on music that he had composed from 1904 to 1915. He made additional revisions in 1919 prior to publishing the work, and continued to revise it throughout his life.

Ives quotes Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 29, "Hammerklavier" in every movement of the work. Ives clearly envisioned his work as an extension of and commentary on Beethoven's sonata. Interestingly, Ives also quotes Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Wagner's Tristan and Isolde and Lohengrin, and Debussy's Children's Corner. Ives also makes use of some of his favorite popular and religious tunes, including: "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean," "Loch Lomond," "Missionary Chant," and "Massa's in De Cold Ground."

Source: http://www.musicweb-international.com/Ives/index.htm

Note: the MP3's I am posting are because I try to raise the interest and awareness for these artists. On purpose, these are not CD quality. I encourage everyone to buy this CD if you like what you hear.

http://rapidshare.com/files/110027428/IvesPianoSonatas.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/110028552/IvesPianoSonatas.part2.rar