Thursday, November 3, 2011, 8 p.m. and Friday, November 4, 2011, 8 p.m.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2011, 8 P.M. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2011, 8 P.M. G G 3TRATHMORE AND 3TRATHMORE AND 0OST#LASSICAL %NSEMBLE 0OST#LASSICAL %NSEMBLE PRESENT PRESENT Charles Ives: A Life in Music Beethoven and Ives William Sharp, baritone Jeremy Denk, piano Jeremy Denk, piano William Sharp, reader Carolyn Goelzer, actor Floyd King, actor With readings for the Concord Sonata culled by Joseph Horowitz from Ives’ Essays Before a Sonata, PostClassical Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez Emerson’s essay “Circles” and Thoreau’s Journal and Walden Written and produced by Joseph Horowitz Second Piano Sonata Charles Ives The Unanswered Question  Charles Ives “Concord, Mass.,  v     %MERSON   “The Circus Band”  Charles Ives (AWTHORNE  “Memories”  Charles Ives 4HE !LCOTTS   In the Inn   Charles Ives 4HOREAU  

“Feldeinsamkeit”  Johannes Brahms INTERMISSION   “Feldeinsamkeit”  Charles Ives Sonata No. 29 in Ludwig van “Remembrance”  Charles Ives B-flat major, Op. 106 Beethoven (Hammerklavier     “The Housatonic at Stockbridge”  Charles Ives Largo Cantabile  Charles Ives !LLEGRO 3CHERZO !SSAI VIVACE INTERMISSION !DAGIO SOSTENUTO “Majority”  Charles Ives )NTRODUZIONE ,ARGO &UGA Over the Pavements   Charles Ives !LLEGRO RISOLUTO “General Booth Enters into Heaven” Charles Ives  ACCOMPANIMENT ORCHESTRATED 0OST CONCERT DISCUSSION WITH THE ARTISTS BY *OHN "ECKER ; = 4HE -USIC #ENTER AT 3TRATHMORE -ARRIOTT #ONCERT 3TAGE “The Alcotts,” from the Concord Charles Ives Piano Sonata   &IVE )VES SONGS WITH ORCHESTRA WITH ACCOMPANIMENTS ORCHESTRATED BY *OHN !DAMS “Thoreau”  “Down East”  “Cradle Song”  “At the River”  “Serenity”  The Unanswered Question Charles Ives

0OST CONCERT DISCUSSION WITH THE ARTISTS 4HE -USIC #ENTER AT 3TRATHMORE -ARRIOTT #ONCERT 3TAGE

28 APPLAUSE AT 3TRATHMORE s NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011 Thursday, November 3, 2011, 8 p.m. and Friday, November 4, 2011, 8 p.m.

THE IVES PROJECT About the Ives Project presented by Strathmore and PostClassical Ensemble By Joseph Horowitz

PostClassical Ensemble In 1942, Edith Ives, age 28, wrote her Angel Gil-Ordóñez, Music Director father a 1,700-word letter for his 68th Joseph Horowitz, Artistic Director birthday—decades after Charles Ives Strathmore had ceased composing. It read in part: Shelley Brown, Vice President of Programming Georgina Javor, Director of Programming “Dear Daddy, “You are so very modest and sweet Made possible through the support of the Strathmore Artistic Initiatives Fund, Daddy, that I don’t think you realize Charles Ives Society, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National the full import of the words people use Endowment for the Arts about you, ‘A great man.’ “Daddy, I have had a chance to see so many men lately—fine fellows, and no The Ives Project doubt the cream of our generation. But I have never in all my life come across one THURSDAY, NOV. 3, 2011, 4 P.M. who could measure up to the fine stan- Ives Master class with Jeremy Denk dard of life and living and you believe in, 4HE -ANSION AT 3TRATHMORE and that I have always seen you put into 3HAPIRO -USIC 2OOM action no matter how many counts were against you. You have fire and imagina- *EREMY $ENK WILL GUIDE PIANO STUDENTS IN THE INTRICACIES OF tion that is truly a divine speak, but to PERFORMING )VES MUSIC AND MAINSTAYS OF THE !MERICAN REPERTOIRE me the great thing is that never once have you tried to turn your gift to your THURSDAY, NOV. 3, 2011, 5:30 P.M. own ends. Instead you have continually Ives Plays Ives given to humanity right from your heart, 4HE -ANSION AT 3TRATHMORE asking nothing in return— and all too 3HAPIRO -USIC 2OOM often getting nothing. The thing that *EREMY $ENK AND *OSEPH (OROWITZ PRESENT makes me happiest about your recogni- AND DISCUSS RARE RECORDINGS OF )VES PLAYING tion today is to see the bread you have AND SINGING HIS OWN MUSIC so generously cast upon most ungrate- ful waters, finally beginning to return to SATURDAY, NOV. 5, 2011, 3:30 P.M. you. All that great love is flowing back Interpreting Ives to you at least. Don’t refuse it because it 4HE -USIC #ENTER AT 3TRATHMORE %DUCATION 7ING 2OOM  comes so late, Daddy.” )MMERSE YOURSELF IN THE MULTIFACETED MUSIC AND EXPLORE THE LIFE AND When I first encountered Edie’s let- LETTERS OF THIS GREAT !MERICAN COMPOSER IN AN AFTERNOON OF LECTURES ter, in Tom Owens’ Selected Correspon- AND PERFORMANCES dence of Charles Ives (2007), I knew 3:30-4:30 p.m.: *OSEPH (OROWITZ ON )VES AND THE 21st Century it had to become part of a public pre- *EREMY $ENK ON )VES AND "EETHOVEN LECTUREPERFORMANCE sentation. I realized, in an instant, 4:30-5:15 p.m.: -INGLE WITH ARTISTS AND MUSIC LOVERS that Ives—himself a writer of distinc- 5:15-6:30 p.m.: 4OM /WENS ON )VES LETTERS 7ILLIAM 3HARP ON THE tion—was a prime candidate for a con- PARLOR SOURCES OF )VES SONGS LECTUREPERFORMANCE cert with actors that would mutually illuminate Ives the man and Ives the SATURDAY, NOV. 5, 2011, 7:30 P.M. composer. The result is “Charles Ives: Ives and Other Innovators A Life in Music,” which launches the 4HE -ANSION AT 3TRATHMORE present three-day “Ives Project.” 4HE *!#+ 1UARTET AN INTREPID YOUNG ENSEMBLE DEDICATED TO PER With George Gershwin, Ives is ar- FORMING NEW MUSIC IS BREAKING GROUND WITH hVISCERALLY EXCITING guably the supreme creative genius to PERFORMANCESv The New York Times  (EAR THEM PERFORM THE MUSIC grace the narrative of American clas- OF )VES JUXTAPOSED WITH WORKS BY SUCH CONTEMPORARY COMPOSERS AS sical music. But, as with Gershwin, 0HILIP 'LASS *ULIA 7OLFE AND #ALEB "URHANS his impact is glancing at best. And, as not with Gershwin, his music remains

APPLAUSE AT 3TRATHMORE s NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011 29 Thursday, November 3, 2011, 8 p.m. and Friday, November 4, 2011, 8 p.m. little known to the musical public at 22), and the David Taylor Trio (Feb. 18). part of “Musicians from Marlboro” na- large. “The Ives Project,” hosted by PostClassical Ensemble has pre- tional tours. Strathmore, engages the pianist Jer- sented more than five dozen events in After graduating from Oberlin Col- emy Denk and the baritone William the Washington, D.C. region, and has lege and Conservatory with degrees in Sharp—both supreme Ives advo- toured programs including the sold-out piano and chemistry, Denk earned a cates—in a strategy for better ac- American stage premiere of Manuel de master’s degree in music from Indiana quainting American audiences with Falla’s El Corregidor y la Molinera at the University as a pupil of György Sebök, the cranky Ives idiom: for penetrating Brooklyn Academy of Music. and a doctorate in piano performance its assaultive exterior and forbidding from The Juilliard School, where he crankiness, for connecting to its warm Jeremy Denk, piano worked with Herbert Stessin. He lives heart and soul. American pia- in New York City. nist Jeremy PostClassical Ensemble Denk has Georgetown University PostClassical Ensemble was founded steadily built a Concert Choir in 2003 by Angel Gil-Ordóñez (music reputation as The Georgetown University Concert director) and Joseph Horowitz (artistic one of today’s Choir is a mixed ensemble that per- director) as an experimental musical most compel- forms a diverse range of sacred and sec- laboratory. It endeavors to expand the ling and per- ular works. Its past repertoire has in- boundaries of orchestral programming suasive artists cluded J.S. Bach’s Jesu, meine Freude and explore new presentation models with an unusually broad repertoire. The Motet No. 3 in E minor (BWV 227), for the field. New York Times describes Denk’s play- Duruflé’s Ubi caritas, and Vaughan This season, subsequent to The ing as “bracing, effortlessly virtuosic, Williams’ Serenade to Music. Direct- Ives Project, PostClassical Ensemble and utterly joyous.” ed by Professor Frederick Binkhold- will present new staged productions He has appeared as soloist with er, the Concert Choir performs one of Manuel de Falla’s El Amor Brujo many major orchestras, including the major concert each semester and at and Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale— Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, NewWorld, special ceremonies and venues such as a double bill at Georgetown Uni- St. Louis and San Francisco Sympho- the White House and the opening of versity’s Gonda Theatre Dec. 3 and nies, as well as the Philadelphia Or- Georgetown University’s Qatar cam- 4. “Schubert Uncorked,” on March chestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Or- pus in 2005. This November, the Con- 31 at Georgetown University’s Gas- pheus Chamber Orchestra and London cert Choir will perform Leonard Bern- ton Hall, will feature bass trombonist Philharmonia. stein’s Chichester Psalms and Johannes David Taylor in the world premiere of Denk maintains working relation- Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes. the Arpeggione Concerto for trombone ships with a number of living com- and orchestra—a reworking of Franz posers and has participated in many Angel Gil-Ordóñez, Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata. Both of premieres, including Jake Heggie’s con- music director, PostClassical Ensemble these programs will link to film events certo Cut Time, Libby Larsen’s Collage: at the National Gallery of Art. Boogie, Kevin Putz’s Alternating Current The 2011-2012 season also marks a and Ned Rorem’s The Unquestioned An- further stage in the ensemble’s ongoing swer. In 2002, he recorded Tobias Pick- collaborations with Strathmore, the er’s Second Piano Concerto with the National Gallery of Art and George- Moscow Philharmonic. He also worked town University, the ensemble’s educa- closely with composer Leon Kirchner tional partner—a partnership support- on many of his recent compositions, re- ed by a major grant from the Andrew cording his Sonata No. 2 in 2001. W. Mellon Foundation. PostClassi- Denk is an avid chamber musician. cal Ensemble broadcasts via Sirius XM He has collaborated with many of the Satellite Radio and WFMT Chicago, world’s finest string quartets, has ap- The former associate conductor of and records for Naxos. peared at the Italian and American the National Symphony Orches- New this season is “PostClassical Un- Spoleto Festivals, the Santa Fe and tra of Spain, Angel Gil-Ordóñez has derground,” a series of informal perfor- Seattle Chamber Music Festivals, the conducted symphonic music, opera mances at Bohemian Caverns jazz club Verbier and Mostly Mozart Festivals, and ballet throughout Europe, the in Washington, D.C. Upcoming “Post- and the Bravo! Vail Valley and Bard United States and Latin America. In Classical Underground” concerts will fea- Music Festivals. He has spent several the United States, he has appeared ture pipa virtuoso Min Xiao-Fen playing summers at the Marlboro Music School with the American Composers Or- Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk (Jan. and Festival in Vermont and has been chestra, Opera Colorado, the Pacific

30 APPLAUSE AT 3TRATHMORE s NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011 Thursday, November 3, 2011, 8 p.m. and Friday, November 4, 2011, 8 p.m.

Symphony, the Hartford Symphony, PostClassical Ensemble musician roster the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Or- for The Ives Project chestra of St. Luke’s and the National Gallery Orchestra in Washington. First Violins Cellos Clarinets Trombones /LEG 2YLATKO 'ITA ,ADD Principal $AVID *ONES ,EE 2OGERS Abroad, he has been heard with the Concertmaster )GOR :UBKOWSKY 3AM "ARLOW Baritone Saxo- Munich Philharmonic, the Solistes de :INO "OGACHEK 3TEVE $UNKEL Bass phone/Clarinet/Bass -ICHELLE +IM Berne, at the Schleswig-Holstein Music %D -ALAGA Clarinet Timpani/ 4IM -ACEK Festival and at the Bellas Artes Nation- "EN "OKOR Percussion Flutes Second Violins "ILL 2ICHARDS al Theatre in Mexico City. In summer !DRIA 3TERNSTEIN Bassoons *ULIA #OX of 2000, he toured the major music fes- .ICOLETTE /PPELT $ON 3HORE Harp Principal Second *ONATHAN "EN 'REANYA 3USAN 2OBINSON tivals of Spain with the Valencia Sym- %VA #APPELLETTI "AUMGARTEN phony Orchestra in the Spanish pre- (EATHER (AUGHN Piano +IM 6ALERIO miere of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass. *ENNIFER 2ICKARD Horns -AYRON 4SONG Piccolo 'REG $RONE Born in Madrid, Gil-Ordóñez has Violas !DRIA 3TERNSTEIN -ARK (UGHES recorded four CDs devoted to Spanish 0HILLIPE #HAO Principal composers, as well as a CD with #HRIS 3HIEH Oboes Trumpet #HELSEY 'REEN )GOR ,ESCHISIN #HRIS 'EKKER PostClassical Ensemble’s Virgil Thom- #AROLE ,IBELO son and Copland CD/DVDs. In 2006, the king of Spain awarded Gil-Or- dóñez the country’s highest civilian Horowitz is also the award-winning other venues. She is a Minnesota State decoration, the Royal Order of Queen author of eight books mainly dealing Arts Board Individual Artist Grantee, Isabella, for his work in advancing with the institutional history of clas- and a three-time recipient of the Spanish culture around the world and sical music in the United States. Both McKnight Fellowship. for performing and teaching Spanish his Classical Music in America: A His- music in its cultural context. tory and Artists in Exile: How Refugees Floyd King, actor from 20th Century War and Revolution Floyd King is a veteran of the Shake- Joseph Horowitz, Transformed the American Performing speare Theatre Company stage and artistic director, PostClassical Ensemble Arts were named best books of the year teaches comedy at The Juilliard Long a pioneer by The Economist. School. His performance credits for in classical His honors and awards include a the Shakespeare Theatre Company music program- Guggenheim Fellowship, two National include Fool in King Lear, Bottom in A ming, he re- Endowment for the Humanities fellow- Midsummer Night’s Dream, Malvolio in ceived national ships and a commendation from the Twelfth Night, Master Ford in The Merry attention as Czech Parliament for his projects ex- Wives of Windsor, Corbaccio in Volpone, executive di- ploring Dvoʼnák in America. Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, rector of the Dromio of Ephesus and Dromio of Syra- Brooklyn Phil- Carolyn Goelzer, actor cuse in The Comedy of Errors, Touch- harmonic Orchestra for The Russian Carolyn Goelzer was a Minneapolis- stone in As You Like It and Parolles in Stravinsky and other festivals explor- based theater artist for 25 years, per- All’s Well That Ends Well. ing the folk roots of concert works. forming roles in most Twin Cities the- Now an artistic adviser to various aters, including the Guthrie, Jungle William Sharp, baritone American orchestras, he has created Theater, Children’s Theatre and Illu- Praised by The New York Times as a more than three dozen interdisciplin- sion. She has also performed on stage “sensitive and subtle singer” who is ary music festivals since 1985. In 2008, in Kansas City, Milwaukee, Chicago, able to evoke “the special character he inaugurated the New York Philhar- New York and Los Angeles. She re- of every song that he sings,” baritone monic’s Inside the Music series, writ- ceived a New York Innovative Theater William Sharp has earned a reputa- ing, hosting and producing a program Award for Outstanding Actress in a tion as a singer of great versatility and about Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” Sym- Lead Role for her portrayal of Clytem- continues to garner critical acclaim for phony; his subsequent Philharmonic nestra in Theodora Skipitares’ Iphigenia his work in concerts, recitals, operas productions explored Dvoʼnák, Brahms at La Mama E.T.C. Goelzer’s original and recordings. and Stravinsky. He is writing and pro- interdisciplinary performance works Sharp has appeared throughout the ducing programs on Dvoʼnák and Re- (The Plant Society, Vicarious Thrills and United States with major orchestras vueltas for the Buffalo Philharmonic, Peas) have been commissioned and and music festivals. In recent seasons Louisville Orchestra, North Carolina presented at the Walker Art Center he has performed with the New York Symphony and Pacific Symphony. and Intermedia Arts, among numerous Philharmonic, St. Louis Symphony,

APPLAUSE AT 3TRATHMORE s NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011 31 Thursday, November 3, 2011, 8 p.m. and Friday, November 4, 2011, 8 p.m.

San Francisco Symphony, National by—Goethe, like the rest of the If the sonata forms of the First and Symphony, New Jersey Symphony crowd, bowed and uncovered—but Second Ives symphonies signify “arti- and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Beethoven stood bolt upright, and fice,” the Fourth Symphony—in com- He is a frequent participant in Lin- refused even to salute, saying: “Let mon with the Concord Sonata—is “all coln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, him bow to us, for ours is a nobler natural”; it abandons “superimposed” Aspen Music Festival, Colorado Mu- empire.” Goethe’s mind knew this idioms. At the same time, the example sic Festival and the Marlboro Music was true, but his moral courage was of Beethoven—revered by the Tran- Festival. Sharp also works extensively not instinctive. scendentalists—remains pertinent. in the performance of baroque and Like Ives, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Late Beethoven”—tonight’s Ham- pre-baroque music. He has made Beethoven embodies ideals of uplift merklavier Sonata, for instance—and numerous appearances with the Bach and equality—and yet will not pander. “late Ives” are cognates. As in late Ives, Aria Group, the Handel and Haydn His language grows arcane. Ives knows the narratives of the late Beethoven Society and at the Maryland Handel this paradox and solves it: Beethoven piano sonatas disregard practicalities Festival. writes symphonies “to the people,” not of public performance; can the abnor- “for the people”; he composes “for the mally dense, precipitously rapid fugue Thomas C. Owens human soul,” not for the “human ear.” of the Hammerklavier Sonata be heard Thomas C. Owens is a specialist in the In fact, with their Beethoven enco- fully as written? life and music of Charles Ives and is miums, the Concord Sonata and Ives’ Also pertinent to late Beethoven the editor of Selected Correspondence of accompanying Essays Before a Sona- and late Ives is stream of conscious- Charles Ives (University of California ta mutually testify that Ives saw him- ness as explored in fin-de-siecle Ger- Press, 2007). He is director of music self striding alongside Emerson and many and Austria. Ives wrote of history and literature at George Mason Beethoven in a common high endeav- Beethoven as a beginning: a step University and was the recipient of its or—that the human, morally empow- toward a liberated music of the fu- Teaching Excellence Award in 2010. ered, might become divine. ture. Here is Ferruccio Busoni, in his His other research interests include For decades, the nine Beethoven Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music: Modernism, 20th century American symphonies comprised a canonical “[Beethoven] ascended one short music, popular music and Balinese text, narrating an exemplary creative step on the way leading music back music. Owens is a member of the board odyssey. The four numbered sympho- to its loftier self. … He did not quite of the Charles Ives Society. nies of Charles Ives, too, comprise an reach absolute music, but in certain evolutionary sequence shadowed by moments he divined it, as in the in- Beethoven’s example, and embedded troduction to the fugue of the Ham- in hallowed Germanic practice. The merklavier Sonata. Indeed, all com- Program Notes Beethoven narrative is commonly read posers have drawn nearest the true as progressive, with “late Beethoven”— nature of music … where they felt Beethoven and Ives the Ninth Symphony, and kindred at liberty to disregard symmetrical Even if he had not saturated his Con- late piano sonatas and string quar- proportions, and unconsciously drew cord Sonata with the motto theme tets—foretasting a challenging future. free breath.” Busoni’s idealized “Ur- from Beethoven’s Fifth, we would well So, too, with Ives. But the Beethoven Musik” is an unfettered stream. Com- know that Beethoven was paramount trajectory can be differently read: as posers, he complains, “have retained for Charles Ives: “in the history of this a retreat into subjective depths of ex- Form as a symbol, and made it into a youthful world the best product that perience and expression by a compos- fetish, a religion. … Is it not singu- human-beings can boast of,” Ives called er—deaf and eccentric—increasingly lar, to demand of a composer origi- him. Beethoven was ethical. He tore cut off from the world. And so it is, as nality in all things, and to forbid it as up his “Eroica” Symphony inscription well, with Ives. regards form? No wonder that, once to Napoleon when Napoleon named Ives cautioned against the dangers he becomes original, he is accused of himself emperor. He celebrated the of a “superimposed idiomatic [musical] ‘formlessness.’ ” freedom fighters Egmont and Florestan. education” that may not fit a com- This was written by an Italian in In Beethoven, writes Ives in Essays be- poser’s “constitution.” He also wrote: Berlin in 1911. In Vienna, Freud and fore a Sonata, “the moral and the intel- “unity is too generally conceived of Klimt, Mahler and Schoenberg were lectual” are one. … as analogous to form; and form charting a darker, more menacing un- It is told, and the story is so well as analogous to custom; and custom conscious. Like Freud, like Mahler, known that we hesitate to re- to habit.. … Perhaps all unity in art, Klimt favors a psychological realism peat it here, that [Beethoven and at its inception, is half-natural and stressing desire and anxiety, neurosis Goethe] were standing in the street half-artificial, but time … inclines to and transcendence. His mural “Philos- one day when the Emperor drove make us feel that it is all natural.” ophy” (1900) shows a tangle of naked

32 APPLAUSE AT 3TRATHMORE s NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011 Thursday, November 3, 2011, 8 p.m. and Friday, November 4, 2011, 8 p.m. bodies floating aimlessly: an acqueous a huge statement. . . . the piled-up opening; gaps appear be- cosmos inhabited by torpid humanity. Maybe finally I play Ives because I tween the thoughts. And in those gaps, As in other Klimt paintings, the lique- feel he’s authentic (a dangerous word). you get glimpses of Emersonian revela- fied medium suggests a stratum of pri- There was a lot of jazz-inspired classical tion: meanings that come from impli- mal subjectivity, an unconscious world music in the 20th century, but so often cation, metaphor, overtone. of instinct dissipating every ‘I,’ a fatal- the jazz seems weirdly off, dolled up, The “Hawthorne” movement is fun- istic vision of transient humanity more uncomfortable in classical confines. … damentally a joke. We enter a cosmos Eastern than Western. Ives wants to re-create the raw experi- of wild, supernatural humor, in which Ives is comparably obsessed with ence of music-making, something un- Ives fuses several ghostly episodes from water. The transcendental nature por- filtered, and beyond all your piano les- Hawthorne’s short stories: ...an ‘ex- traits “The Housatonic at Stockbridge” sons; though writing fiendishly difficult tended fragment’ trying to suggest some and “Thoreau” (the song and the piano piano music, he wants you to remem- of his wilder, fantastical adventures sonata movement, both of which we ber there is something more important into the half-childlike, half-fairylike hear this week) are also river and pond than just “playing well”; while driving phantasmal realms... portraits: elemental musical watercol- me crazy, he reminds me why I play the One tale that plays a central role is ors. In his Fourth Symphony, the fi- piano al all. The Celestial Railroad, where passen- nale’s gathering current constitutes The Concord Sonata’s four move- gers book an express ticket to Heav- Ives’ most heroic Ur-Musik: an ocean. ments are wildly different portraits, en, do a great deal of celebrating and Mahler’s Ninth is a psychic autobiogra- reflecting Ives’ visions of four major drinking en route, and laugh heartily phy infested with Old World demons, figures of the Transcendentalist move- at the slow-moving, hungry pilgrims defiantly swimming against the tide to- ment. Ives begins with “Emerson,” and singing their hymns outside the win- ward apotheosis. Ives knows nothing of aims to capture his digressive, heaven- dow. Of course, the express train does floating nudes; a New World meliorist storming spirit: not exactly make it to Heaven. This (who was also a New World prude), he As thoughts surge to his mind, he ironic interplay of the profane and the simply rides an upward wave. fills the heavens with them, crowds sacred is arguably the “theme” of the Joseph Horowitz them in, if necessary, but seldom ar- movement, and the source of much Artistic Director, PostClassical Ensemble ranges them along the ground first. of its wit and brilliance. Shifting back (Extracted from Joseph Horowitz’s Moral And so, Ives presents all his ideas and forth from ragtime to marching Fire: Portraits from America’s Fin de piled on top of each other at the out- band to hymn to unearthly filigree, Siecle, to be published by the University of set, in a sea of dissonant improvisation. the movement never sits still; it is in- California Press in 2012) It is a bold opening gambit, a cadenza satiably associative. Experienced Ive- on everything. Then, over the course sians will know that once “Colum- About Ives and the Concord of the next 15 minutes, Ives untangles bia the Gem of the Ocean” enters, all Sonata the mess, revealing each idea individu- (musical) hell will break loose: the There is a terrific tenderness emanat- ally in an epiphanic series of episodes. movement careens to its end, with ing from this dissonant, difficult music: One gets the sense of a vast gospel/ a chaotic, virtuosic pile-up of every- a tenderness for experiences of child- essay, including materials from hymn, thing but the kitchen sink. hood, for the “uneducated,” fervid revival, Beethoven, Wagner, fugue, rec- “The Alcotts” is an evocation of hymn-singing of camp meetings, for itative: you name it, from the “highest” the Orchard House in Concord, where the silliness or ragtime, for the quaint to the “lowest.” the Alcott family lived. ...There is a wistful corners of ballads, and on and It is impossible to discuss the form of commonplace beauty about “Orchard on. There is a correspondingly enor- “Emerson” as a whole; it’s irreducible House”—a kind of spiritual sturdi- mous wit: the love of crazy musical mis- to any formula. Some of these episodes ness underlying its quaint picturesque- hap, a love of syncopation, disjunc- represent the prose of Emerson, and ness—a kind of common triad of the tion, mashup; the merger of opposites. others, with greater rhythmic regular- New England homestead, whose over- Ives re-creates, almost like Proust, a ity, evoke his verse. tones tell us that there must have been whole world for us: the musical world Toward the end, though, there is a something aesthetic fibered in the Pu- of America in the last part of the 19th sense of perspective: descending chro- ritan severity—the self-sacrificing part century. He evokes a tremendous nos- matic lines take over in the bass; there of the idea—a value that seems to stir a talgia for that world, while making it is a dissolve and deconstruction, with deeper feeling, a stronger sense of being alive again … the various themes disintegrating into nearer some perfect truth... The Concord Sonata represents the ever-shorter bits and haunting recur- Beth is playing at the spinet, a summit of Ives’ maturity, an attempt to rences of Beethoven’s Fifth. gift from Sophia Thoreau; she plays consolidate his musical (and extramusi- With these silences between the Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, of course, cal) thinking, to bring it all together in ideas, Ives approaches the opposite of but does not discriminate; she plays

APPLAUSE AT 3TRATHMORE s NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011 33 Thursday, November 3, 2011, 8 p.m. and Friday, November 4, 2011, 8 p.m. hymns, too, a Scotch air, and a glimpse ending his day he looks out over the five comprising a serene set with or- of Mendelssohn’s wedding march. This clear, crystalline water of the pond chestrated accompaniments created movement very overtly and obvious- and catches a glimpse of the shadow- by John Adams. ly fuses classical themes with popular thought he saw in the morning’s mist The texts I have culled, in addition ones. This fusion has a cathartic effect: and haze—he knows that by his final to letters written by Charles, his wife there is a triumphant, C-major arriv- submission, he possesses the “Freedom Harmony, and their daughter Edie, in- al, toward the end, of the “transcen- of the Night.” clude passages from the New York Her- dental theme of Concord”: The emer- A paradoxical way to end such an ald, the New York Herald-Tribune, the gence of this theme in its entirety—“ ambitious monument of the imagina- Danbury News and Ives’ own Memos the human faith melody”—is a pivotal tion: with the notion of night, nature, and Essays Before a Sonata. moment of clarity and understanding. renunciation. For all his self-reliance, Many are the stories memorably To borrow a phrase from Emerson, it’s for all his desire to hew his own path, limning Ives the man. One of my fa- a glorious shining forth of the piece’s Ives always seemed to gesture toward vorites was told by Charles Buesing, an “Over-soul.” an ideal of music much bigger than employee of the life insurance firm Ives The last movement, “Thoreau,” has himself. & Myrick, which supplied Ives with an a simple, specific narrative: a day on By Jeremy Denk ample livelihood to support his com- Walden Pond. Thoreau awakens at (excerpted from his notes for the CD posing habit. dawn, in haze and mist, and listens to Jeremy Denk Plays Ives) Buesing remembered Ives as “a very Nature’s sounds. But eventually he gets shy, retiring man.” He was “very kind- the desire to act. He gets (as Ives puts Charles Ives: A Life in Music ly,” never harsh or angry. He “would it) “going after somethin’.” He makes Though regarded by many as America’s talk to anyone.” He “made everyone several attempts to get after some- pre-eminent concert composer, Charles feel important.” The first time Buesing thing— whatever it is—and reaches Ives (1874-1954) remains little known entered Ives’ office, which was “out of an ecstatic climax of action (C major). to the concert-going public. His music sight,” “around a corner,” he thought But just at that moment the rhythm of retains an esoteric taint. In part, this Ives asleep. His eyes were shut, his Nature intervenes: results from its belated discovery by feet rested on a desk drawer, his desk …he knows now that he must let modernists who cherished complexity. was a mass of papers. “Come in and sit Nature flow through him, and slowly… Today, in post-modern times, the down,” Ives said, his eyes still closed. A repeated, haunting three-note fig- opportunity is ripe to rediscover Ives He asked Buesing about his family, his ure in the left hand (A-C-G) repre- as a turn-of-the-century Connecticut work, his future plans. He encouraged sents this rhythm of nature. Over it, Yankee rooted in Transcendentalism him to stick with the life insurance and seemingly inseparable from it, is a and Progressivism—a product (howev- business. new theme in the right hand: a mourn- er original) of his own time and place. One day, an Ives & Myrick sales- ful reworking of Stephen Foster’s bal- Ives’ vivid personality, and a plethora man named Charlie came to Buesing lad “Down in the Cornfield,” evoking of vivid writings (essays and letters), with tears in his eyes. Charlie had gone a line from Walden: “I grew in those reinforce this opportunity. In particular, months without a sale; he had no in- seasons like corn in the night, and they Tom Owens’ Selected Correspondence of come. Ives had just paid him a visit. were far better than any work of the Charles Ives (2007) affords a treasure “Charlie,” Ives had said, “will you take hands...” Thoreau has relapses of de- trove of potential readings for Ives out your wallet?” Charlie did. “Now, sire; the push and pull of action versus concerts. you open it,” said Ives. The wallet was Nature continues. Tonight’s program uses words and empty. “I thought so,” said Ives. “No But for the conclusion and synthe- music to narrate Ives’ story, includ- one can ever make a sale of anything sis of this dialectical day, Ives reserves a ing his passionate courtship, his fierce with an empty wallet. Now, I want you beautiful, crowning Romantic gesture. Transcendentalism, and his cranky to take this as a business loan. I know The “human faith melody” of Con- politics. The music ranges from the you’ll have so much confidence with cord appears once more, to evoke Tho- familiar—The Unanswered Question, what I am going to put in that wallet reau’s flute over Walden Pond). This perhaps Ives’ best-known composi- that you will pay me back, and I don’t Transcendental Theme is seen through tion, and “The Alcotts” from his Con- want an I.O.U. or anything else.” And the mists of other motives; it merges cord Piano Sonata—to such densely Ives put $50 in Charlie’s wallet. As Ives with the rhythm of Nature; and then original orchestral nuggets as In the left the office, Charlie said to Buesing, it vanishes, leaving us listening to the Inn and Over the Pavements. Interwo- “There is a great man.” rhythm of Nature, pulsing on. I will ven are no fewer than a dozen Ives Joseph Horowitz leave it to Ives to describe the ending: songs, including one with its piano ac- Artistic Director, PostClassical Ensemble ’Tis an evening when the “whole companiment orchestrated by early body is one sense,” ...and before American modernist John Becker, and Please see insert for song texts.

34 APPLAUSE AT 3TRATHMORE s NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011