Review
Music Reviews
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
One hundred fifty years ago, a mild-mannered insurance man was born in a small Connecticut town. On nights and weekends, he composed music.
(SOUNDBITE OF JEREMY DENK AND STEFAN JACKIW PERFORMANCE OF IVES' "VIOLIN SONATA NO. 4 'CHILDREN'S DAY AT THE CAMP MEETING': I. ALLEGRO")
DETROW: Most of the music Charles Ives composed went unperformed in his lifetime. After he died in 1954, his reputation grew as America's first truly original composer. To mark the anniversary, pianist Jeremy Denk releases the album "Ives Denk" with violinist Stefan Jackiw. And our reviewer, NPR's Tom Huizenga, has been listening.
TOM HUIZENGA, BYLINE: Charles Ives was a free thinker, and his wildest ideas were inherited from his father, a musical jack of all trades who once told his son, if he knew how to write a fugue the right way, he should also try the wrong way. Indeed, much of Ives' music sounds like the wrong way. Take this passage from the second violin sonata, where the hymn "Come, Thou Fount Of Every Blessing" barges in ecstatic over a piano gone bonkers.
(SOUNDBITE OF JEREMY DENK AND STEFAN JACKIW PERFORMANCE OF IVES' "VIOLIN SONATA NO. 2: III. THE REVIVAL")
HUIZENGA: Ives was obsessed with all the music around him. You never know when a church hymn, circus march or parlor song might weasle its way into a piece or rag time. In the ramshackle middle movement of the third violin sonata, you can hear Ives tinkering with the music, as if he's trying out ideas on the spot.
(SOUNDBITE OF JEREMY DENK AND STEFAN JACKIW PERFORMANCE OF IVES' "VIOLIN SONATA NO. 3: II. ALLEGRO")
HUIZENGA: There's a kind of free-wheeling watch-me-build-it swagger in Ives' music that sounds unmistakably American and surprisingly contemporary today.
(SOUNDBITE OF JEREMY DENK AND STEFAN JACKIW PERFORMANCE OF IVES' "VIOLIN SONATA NO. 2: II. IN THE BARN")
HUIZENGA: Jeremy Denk, in his perceptive liner notes for this new album, sums up Ives for us in 2024, saying that he's, quote, "optimistic but always messy, always falling apart at the seams. His music suggests America will just have to muddle through and wrestle with its own failure." Beside the four violin sonatas, the album includes the two enormous piano sonatas. The first dates from around 1915 and starts out innocent, almost like Brahms.
(SOUNDBITE OF JEREMY DENK AND STEFAN JACKIW PERFORMANCE OF IVES' "PIANO SONATA NO. 1: I. ADAGIO CON MOTO")
HUIZENGA: But some 25 minutes later, just before the ominous final movement, the hymn "Bringing In The Sheaves" turns up belligerent and broken.
(SOUNDBITE OF JEREMY DENK AND STEFAN JACKIW PERFORMANCE OF IVES' "PIANO SONATA NO. 1: IVB. ALLEGRO-PRESTO-SLOW")
HUIZENGA: Ives believed in the utopian possibilities of music, so it's no surprise that his "Piano Sonata No. 2" is inspired by American transcendentalists. It's a mammoth, all-encompassing work, separate portraits of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and the Alcotts. Yet common threads are woven through. Right off the bat, there's a nod to Beethoven's fifth. Hear it low in the left hand.
(SOUNDBITE OF JEREMY DENK AND STEFAN JACKIW PERFORMANCE OF IVES' "PIANO SONATA NO. 2: 'CONCORD, MASS., 1840-1860': EMERSON")
HUIZENGA: That da-ta-ta-ta (ph) Beethoven theme evolves into some of Ives' most tender music.
(SOUNDBITE OF JEREMY DENK AND STEFAN JACKIW PERFORMANCE OF IVES' "PIANO SONATA NO. 2 'CONCORD, MASS., 1840-1860': THE ALCOTTS")
HUIZENGA: These performances are both delicate and muscular, like Ives' music, filled with contradictions, failure, grace and vision. Sesquicentennial or not, this bold anniversary album is worth hearing and thinking about, especially during an election season fraught with conflicting views of what it means to be an American.
(SOUNDBITE OF JEREMY DENK AND STEFAN JACKIW PERFORMANCE OF IVES' "VIOLIN SONATA NO. 2: II. IN THE BARN")
DETROW: The album is "Ives Denk." Our reviewer is NPR's Tom Huizenga.
(SOUNDBITE OF JEREMY DENK AND STEFAN JACKIW PERFORMANCE OF IVES' "VIOLIN SONATA NO. 2: II. IN THE BARN")
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