Back in 1999, pianist Donald Berman rolled out his CRI disc The Unknown Ives. At that time the main controversy about the release seemed to center around how truly "unknown" these works of Charles Ives really were, as several of them had been recorded before, for example the Three-Page Sonata, which had been in print since the 1940s. But when Ives' adherents figured out that Berman was utilizing new Ives Society critical editions that hadn't been previously recorded, and likewise learned what a fine job Berman was doing in playing them, they took the bait and the disc quickly sold out. Now it's 2004, and CRI belongs to history. Fortunately this has not deterred Berman from preparing a companion volume to his first effort, The Unknown Ives, Vol. 2, for release on New World Records. The Unknown Ives, Vol. 2, is loaded with Ives piano works that have verily never heretofore been recorded or published. Most of these pieces are early, unchallenging works that nonetheless possess extraordinary charm and betray Ives' emerging talent. Berman has rather slyly interleaved this easier listening with the tougher stuff, achieving through sequencing a mix that satisfies in its variety and never dishes out more than what the average listener can take -- the portions of Ives' wildly differing stylistic pursuits are measured out just right.
First-time items include the fragmentary studies Study No. 1 and Study No. 11; the only previous recording of the latter is Ives' own, made in 1938. Study No. 4 is likewise a new addition to the recorded catalog, along with six of the seven marches heard here and the extremely early Minuetto Op. 4, composed when Ives was only 12 years of age. There is even a fugue written by his father, George Ives. But the pièce de resistance here is a product of Ives' pen not even previously identified as a stand-alone composition, Ives' so-called "black march" Impression of the "St. Gaudens" in the Boston Common. This comes from a clear ink score written out for piano that later served as the model for the first movement of Orchestral Set No. 1: Three Places in New England. It is one of Ives' most idiomatic scores for piano and is couched in his best, most beautifully serene transcendentalist style, along the lines of the "Thoreau" movement of the Concord Sonata.
The reviewer is going to sidestep the usual nitpicky comparisons between Berman's recordings of the previously recorded Ives' works with their predecessors. All of these interpretations are fine, especially the Waltz-Rondo and Study No. 5. But there is so much new Ives territory mapped out here to encounter and enjoy such a comparison is irrelevant -- no true Ivesian will want to go forward in life without partaking of The Unknown Ives, Vol. 2.
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