Ives - Romanzo di Central Park - Hyperion: CDA67644 - CD or download

…outstandingly well sung and played, equally well recorded, and highly recommendable to all lovers of fine songs and fine singing. — BBC Music Magazine, March 2008, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 28th Jan 2008
Catalogue No: CDA67644
Label: Hyperion
Length: 62 minutes

Gramophone Awards

2008

Finalist - Solo Vocal
BBC Music Magazine

March 2008

Choral & Song Choice
Penguin Guide

Rosette

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Ives, C: On the Counter

Work length1:30

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: The Circus Band

Work length2:17

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: Two Little Flowers

Work length1:26

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: Illmenau

Work length2:15

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Gerald Finley (baritone)

Ives, C: A Night Song

Work length1:23

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: Down East

Work length3:10

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: Premonitions

Work length1:52

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: The See'r

Work length1:04

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: Songs My Mother Taught Me

Work length2:29

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: In the Alley

Work length2:00

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: Mists

Work length1:40

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: They Are There!

Work length2:56

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Magnus Johnston (violin), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: In Flanders Fields

Work length3:03

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: The South Wind

Work length2:45

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: My native land

Work length1:45

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: Watchman!

Work length1:47

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: The Children's Hour

Work length2:32

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: Evidence

Work length1:21

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: The World’s Wanderers

Work length1:46

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: Slow March

Work length1:52

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: Omens and Oracles

Work length2:54

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: Those Evening Bells

Work length1:56

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: Allegro

Work length1:23

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: Evening

Work length2:02

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: The Last Reader

Work length1:40

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: To Edith

Work length1:30

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: At the river

Work length2:32

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: A Christmas Carol

Work length2:10

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: The Light that is Felt

Work length2:13

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Julius Drake (piano)

Ives, C: Romanzo (di Central Park)

Work length3:00

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Gerald Finley (baritone), Magnus Johnston (violin), Julius Drake (piano)

About
Reviews
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About

In a second disc of Ivess songs, the unbeatable partnership of Finley and Drake again enthral their listeners and bring them to the emotional core of each work. The range of style and approach in Ivess text-setting is startlingfrom simple, sentimental ballads to complex and strenuous philosophical discourses, sometimes encompassing the most dissonant and virtuosic piano parts, sometimes with the accompaniment pared down to an almost minimalist phrase-repetition. Even those composed in a superficially conventional or polite tonal idiom usually contain harmonic, rhythmic or accentual surprises somewhere. A particular beauty is Mists, composed in 1910. The poem is by Ivess wife Harmonyan elegy after her mothers sudden death that year. The manuscript, written while on vacation at Elk Lake in the Adirondacks, is dated last mist at Pells Sep 20 1910. This exquisite and deeply felt setting, with its brume of Impressionistic harmonies in contrary motion, is among Ivess most atmospheric songs. This thrilling collection also includes Ivess War Songs and settings of Goethe.

Reviews

March 2008

…outstandingly well sung and played, equally well recorded, and highly recommendable to all lovers of fine songs and fine singing.

2010

This is the second volume of Ives songs from this accomplished team; their first Ives volume (reviewed above) contained some of the blockbusters like Charlie Rutlage and General WilliamBooth but the mood of this volume is fairly sedate. In particular some of the early songs in a conventional style are treated with the same seriousness that Finley would apply to Lieder.
An unusual but effective feature here is the provision of violin obbligato both for the jingoistic wartime song They Are There! and the mawkish take-off Romanzo (di Central Park). Sentimentality is a Victorian characteristic but in Songs MyMother Taught Me, as elsewhere in Ives, the emotion is genuine so it invariably convinces.
Many of the songs are transposed down – hard work for the pianist and it makes some of the textures rather dense. The contemplative ones are delivered with an impressive serenity and Finley has his own way of attacking the razzledazzle of something like The Circus Band or TheyAre There! He's close-miked, which works best in the intimacy of the quieter songs.

April 2008

…some of the early songs in a conventional style are treated with the same seriousness that Finley would apply to Lieder. The contemplative ones are delivered with an impressive serenity and Finley has his own way of attacking the razzle-dazzle of something like "The Circus Band" or "They Are There!".

This is a highly successful follow-up to Gerald Finley and Julius Drake’s first Ives recital from 2005. Here there is the same sort of mix, from familiar songs such as The Circus Band and Watchman! To an early requiem for the family cat and the intriguing title song, Romanzo (di
Central Park), with its obbligato violin part atmospherically played by Magnus Johnston. Finley is his usual charismatic self, at home as much in the hymnody as the parody, and he is careful not to over-sentimentalise the more homely numbers while injecting pathos into the war songs. Drake
projects Ives’s often complex accompaniments with clarity and style

Gerald Finley has everything and more in his darkly full-bodied voice to match the often formidable technical and expressive requirements of Ives’s songbook—reinforced by Drake’s elastic, expressive piano … this is a must-buy album

Ives - Romanzo di Central Park

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