Ives: Piano Sonata & Songs

It's a conceptual collage fraught with intellectual and technical difficulties...which makes Pierre-Laurent Aimard a near-perfect match, a pianist who revels in Ives's ideas and who's equal to... — Andrew McGregor, bbc.co.uk, 24th June 2004 More…

Release Date: 10th May 2004
Catalogue No: 2564602972
Label: Warner Classics
Length: 79 minutes

Gramophone Magazine

June 2004

Editor's Choice
Grammy Awards

47th Awards (2004)

Best Classical Solo Vocal Album

Ives, C: The Things our Father Loved

Work length2:03

$1.00

$1.30

Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: The Housatonic at Stockbridge

Work length3:53

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Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: From The Swimmers

Work length1:39

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Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: Memories: (A) Very Pleasant; (B) Rather Sad

Work length2:27

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Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: Ann Street

Work length0:55

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Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: Serenity

Work length2:19

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Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: ‘1, 2, 3'

Work length0:35

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Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: Songs My Mother Taught Me

Work length3:26

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Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: The Circus Band

Work length2:25

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Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: The Cage

Work length0:45

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Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: The Indians

Work length1:58

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Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: Like a Sick Eagle

Work length1:53

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Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: "A sound of a distant horn"

Work length0:52

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Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: September

Work length0:49

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Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: Soliloquy, or a Study in 7ths and Other Things

Work length0:57

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Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: Farewell to Land

Work length1:44

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Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: Thoreau

Work length2:14

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Susan Graham (mezzo-soprano), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 19 'Concord, Mass., 1840-1860'

Work length29:46

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$2.60

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano), Tabea Zimmermann (viola)

I Emerson

Track length17:17

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II Hawthorne

Track length12:29

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Ives, C: Piano Sonata No.2, 'Concord Mass., 1840-60' : III The Alcotts

Work length6:21

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Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

Ives, C: Piano Sonata No.2, 'Concord Mass., 1840-60' : IV Thoreau

Work length12:07

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Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano), Emmanuel Pahud (flute)

Reviews
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Reviews

24th June 2004

It's a conceptual collage fraught with intellectual and technical difficulties...which makes Pierre-Laurent Aimard a near-perfect match, a pianist who revels in Ives's ideas and who's equal to the almost insane physical demands of the 'Concord' Sonata...and what a result: intelligent programming, breathtaking performances, and a crystal clear recording.

2010

Charles Ives to complaining pianist: 'Is it the composer's fault that man has only ten fingers?' Listening to Pierre-Laurent Aimard play the Concord Sonata it isn't Ives's dry wit but the assertion that man has only ten fingers that you begin to question.
Nothing he wrote was 'reasonable' as in playable, singable. Everything was a stretch, a note or chord or counterpoint too far. Technically optimistic, spiritually aspirational. In a sense Aimard is almost too good, the realisation of everything Ives was striving for in this piece. You can almost hear Ives thinking: 'OK, if that's possible, let's go somewhere else…' Actually, the Concord Sonata goes wherever you want it to go. Its starting point is American literature but its substance is in ideas. Ives the transcendentalist: beyond the American dream.
An amazing stream of consciousness. Concord is a town in Massachusetts, it's where American Independence was bloodily born; but it's also a word for harmony, and for Ives there's harmony in extreme diversity. The big moments in the sonata are all born out of flux. Ideas and notes boil over in the second movement, 'Hawthorne', but at its heart is the basic conflict between the earthly body and its free spirit. The body resists, the spirit meditates. There are moments here where you'd swear two pianists were involved.
You'd also swear that the sorrowful song so fleetingly alluded to by solo viola (Tabea Zimmerman) in the first movement or the remnant of solo flute (Emmanuel Pahud) in the last are figments of your imagination.
Ives's imagination – his rampant theatricality – should have made for great operas. Instead he wrote songs: capsule dramas laid out not in scenes or acts but moments in time. Susan Graham inhabits 17 such moments – nostalgic ('Songs my mother taught me'), visionary ('A sound of distant horn'), cryptic ('Soliloquy'), brutal ('1, 2, 3'), expectant ('Thoreau') – and the feminine and masculine qualities of her voice, to say nothing of her musical sensibility, easily encompass the 'expectancy and ecstasy' promised by the song 'Memories' – which appropriately enough recalls her (and others like her) as a little girl 'sitting in the opera house'. Aimard is again a one-man band. Almost literally so in 'The Circus Band'. When Graham shouts 'hear the trombones', you really do.

Ives: Piano Sonata & Songs

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