Charles Ives: Best of the Best

When he wasn't selling insurance or pioneering the art of estate planning, Charles Ives (1874-1954) wrote some of the most innovative compositionsever to come out of America. And, though Ives experimented with atonality and dissonance in his symphonies and tone poems, you'll also find strains of folk tunes, hymns, and marches, combined into an astonishingly original and American-maverick style. Here are his essential recordings.

	Ives: Symphonies no 1 & 4 / Thomas, Chicago SO & Chorus
	Charles Ives(Composer), et al Usually ships in 2-3 days Click here for more information	Our Price: $11.97
Amazon.com essential recording Ives's First Symphony is an attractive, conservative piece with a gorgeous slow movement based on a hymn tune and a finale that sounds strangely like early Bruckner. The Fourth, on the other hand, is arguably his masterpiece, and one of the most radical compositions in the history of music. Scored for a huge orchestra with three solo pianos, chorus, offstage and onstage instruments, and "everything but the kitchen sink" percussion, it requires at least two conductors to keep it all coordinated....Read more
	Ives: Holiday Symphony, etc / Tilson Thomas, Chicago SO
	Charles Ives(Composer), et al Usually ships in 2-3 days Click here for more information	Our Price: $11.97
Amazon.com essential recording Ives never really intended his four holiday symphonic poems to be played together, and they are very seldom performed that way live. But it makes so much sense to group them on a recording that the Holidays Symphony has become the standard way to refer to the music. In any event, all four pieces offer some of Ives'ss finest, most imaginative work. The Fourth of July is the second most complex and crazy piece that he ever wrote--right up there with the second movement of the Fourth Symphony....Read more
	Ives: Symphony no 3, etc / Slatkin, St Louis SO
	Charles Ives(Composer), et al Usually ships in 1-2 weeks Click here for more information	List Price: $16.97 Our Price: $15.49 You Save: $1.48 (9%)
Amazon.com essential recording These are the major works of Charles Ives (1874-1954), done in magnificent sound--and superlative performances--by Louis Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. Three Places in New England--and perhaps this version--belongs in every collection of 20th-century American music. Also a treat here are The Unanswered Question and Central Park in the Dark. These aren't tone poems, quite. (It's hard to say what they are.) But Ives had the knack for providing even his most discordant works a...Read more
	Ives: The Sonatas for Violin & Piano / Fulkerson, Shannon
	Charles Ives(Composer), et al Usually ships in 24 hours Click here for more information	List Price: $17.97 Our Price: $16.49 You Save: $1.48 (8%)
Amazon.com essential recording Ives's music ranges from the conservatively tonal to the wildly experimental. The four violin sonatas contain examples of both types, as well as those typically Ivesian collage pieces in which every New England hymn and march tune known to mankind gets thrown together in sort of a musical tossed salad. They also range wildly in length, from the 11 minute Fourth Sonata, subtitled Children's Day at the Camp Meeting (a haunting meditation on Protestant hymn tunes related to the Third Symphony) to...Read more
	Ives Plays Ives - The Composer at the Piano
	Charles Ives(Composer) Usually ships in 24 hours Click here for more information	List Price: $16.97 Our Price: $15.49 You Save: $1.48 (9%)
Amazon.com essential recording In his lifetime, maverick composer Charles Ives entered the recording studio only four times, mostly to hear (and tinker with) his works in progress. He ended up doing 42 takes of 17 different pieces on the piano, all recorded between 1933 and 1943: everything from snippets of the unfinished Emerson Concerto to his rousing wartime anthem "They Are There!" It's a varied lot, to say the least, but now we have his complete recordings on one CD. The sound quality isn't great and you can easily hear...Read more