Leonard Bernstein – The Symphony Edition - CD25 – Charles Ives – Symphonies no 2 & no 3
                      伯恩斯坦交响曲大全集 之 CD25 艾维斯第二、第三交响曲
                      作      曲：Charles Ives 艾维斯
                      指      挥：Leonard Bernstein 伯恩斯坦
                      乐      团：New York Philharmonic 纽约爱乐管弦乐团

                      厂      牌：SONY
                      CD  编  号：886976836528
                      发行日期：2010-10-8 （合集发行日）

CHARLES IVES 艾维斯
Born: October 20, 1874. Danbury, CT
Died: May 19, 1954. New York, NY

He's been dubbed the greatest American composer by such cultural shapers as Time magazine and Leonard Bernstein. You've never heard of Charles Ives? That's OK - he wouldn't have cared.
But wait - aren't America's contributions to classical music surely eclipsed by its gifts to jazz, blues, country, pop and, of course, good old rock 'n' roll? Could Ives really have been more important than Louis Armstrong, Robert Johnson, Hank Williams, George Gershwin or Chuck Berry?
Well, to each his own.  But greatest or not, Ives is surely the quintessential American composer. His music bursts at every seam with the idiom of our culture. Like America itself, Ives brimmed with all our contradictions and complexity, an amalgam of traditional roots and far-reaching vision.
Ives was born and raised in Connecticut. The New England Transcendentalists' belief in nature and self-reliance imbued him with a basic faith both in the common man and in himself. His views were stretched by his father George, the leader of the Danbury village band, who loved to experiment with acoustics (exploring the sound of instruments in various natural settings), counterpoint (playing melody and harmony in different keys), dissonance (constructing a machine to divide octaves into hundreds of microtones) and happenstance (arranging for bands playing different songs to pass each other in parades). This clash of old and new would come to permeate Ives's music, which confidently tosses together everyday elements in bizarre extremes. Superficially, at least, it can seem like haphazard primitive junk.
Ives was a man of deep philosophical conviction, always insisting on doing things his own way or not at all. But upon graduating from Yale, he faced a dilemma - he refused to compromise his principles to compose trendy, attractive music that would earn a living; yet, as he put it, he couldn't let his children starve on his dissonances. His solution was a hard but practical one - he relegated art to the sidelines and devoted himself to the world of business. Beginning as an actuarial clerk, Ives worked his way up with phenomenal success and by middle-age could have retired a multi-millionaire (back when that really meant something). But Ives stayed true to his roots by living humbly and striving to tailor life insurance to the needs of working men. For decades he was known as the innovator of estate planning and sales training and a guiding light of the insurance industry. Associates were often surprised to learn that he also wrote music.
Ives consigned his musical career, such as it was, to evenings and weekends, during which he compiled a striking portfolio of far-fetched compositions whose atonality, wildly complex rhythms, linear structures and other devices anticipated by decades much of what we have come to consider the leading edge of 20th century music. And then, around 1920, just as he reached his early forties and could have begun to focus attention on attracting an indifferent world's notice to his art, Ives's health faltered. Although his life was barely half over, he became increasingly withdrawn. He ignored the musical establishment, which gladly repaid the favor. He remained one of America's best-kept secrets.
Ives did little to ease his artistic seclusion. He avoided contacts that could have led to recognition, feeling that he would "work better if I kept to my own music and let other people keep to theirs." He believed that good music had to be noncommercial, envisioning the birth of true talent "when the last man who is willing to make a living out of art is gone and gone forever." He rarely sought performances, believing that "the more a composer accepts from his patron, the less he will accept from himself." He refused to copyright his music, insisting that anyone be able to use it, and scared off publishers by demanding that they make free copies available upon request. He issued only two works - his "Concord" Piano Sonata and a collection of songs - entirely at his own expense and gave away the copies.
Ives's music reflects the central paradox that shaped his upbringing. On the one hand, he was an ardent populist. He unabashedly "borrowed" his themes from hymns, marches, the classics and songs and showed his respect for the taste and talent of the common man by replicating untutored singing through "wrong" notes, "faltering" rhythms and clusters of tones. Yet, he disdained conventional music for its repetitious form and the inefficiency of so many musicians playing the same notes. He had no tolerance for pretty, soothing sounds (he especially scorned Mozart for having emasculated music) and derided as "Rollos" and "Ladybirds" those who couldn't take a dissonance like a man. And his music is astoundingly complex and difficult to perform. Indeed, he readily admitted that some of it was unplayable and he took as a compliment criticism that his works were too dense and crammed with overlapping fragments of ideas thrown together in a seemingly chaotic stream-of-consciousness. Perhaps the key to understanding Ives lies in the character of America itself - Ives's music is a reflection of our great melting pot society to which other cultures contribute, but from which the result emerges as something altogether new and exciting.
These thoughts are prompted by the recent release of a CD, Ives Plays Ives (CRI 310). Its significance extends far beyond its unassuming title.  It is, quite simply, the most direct introduction to one of the greatest composers of any age. Be forewarned, though - this is not a disc to enjoy in a conventional sense, especially if you have Rollo or Ladybird tendencies. Rather, it's a wild, untamed glimpse into the Ives workshop, and a rather messy one at that.
Never intended for public consumption, Ives' only recording sessions, held between 1933 and 1943, long after his retirement, were undertaken for a far more poignant reason - he just wanted to hear how his music sounded. Pending critical and public attention (mostly posthumous), performances of his works were few and recordings rarer still, with none at all until 1934. So, with typical Yankee resolve, Ives decided to record some of it himself.
What do we have? Nearly all the cuts are studies and embellishments of the "Emerson" movement of his "Concord" Sonata, with which Ives remained obsessed long after his creative period ended. Ives clearly loved this music and (to the horror of would-be performers) bridled at the notion of a definitive edition, constantly rewriting it with evolving insight, reveling in "the daily pleasure of playing this music and seeing it grow, and feeling that it is not finished and the hope that it will never be." His approach is raw and unvarnished, and therefore as close to the core of his creative mind as we can ever hope to come.
We also get three takes of Ives singing his patriotic song, "They Are There." Did I say singing? Perhaps bellowing or manic ranting is more like it. As his father once told him, "Don't pay too much attention to the sounds or you may miss the music." And sure enough, although Ives's vocals are crude, off-key, and glaringly unmusical (in every conventional sense), the indomitable spirit of his song comes barreling through.
After 73 minutes of such challenging, improvisational stuff, the disc concludes on a breathtaking note - an exquisite performance of the "Alcott" movement of the Concord Sonata that is as gorgeous, straightforward and inviting as the rest had been thorny, bewildering and alienating. The theme is lifted from the famous opening "fate" motif of Beethoven's Fifth but with a wistful tail, firmly tonal but with searching distant harmonies, strong and bold but with tender, honest emotion. Here is Ives for the ages - short and direct, nothing wasted, planting a clich閐 German theme into the rich Connecticut soil from which it springs up afresh, transforming a formula of the past into a wholly new music of shimmering vision. It's nothing less than a microcosm of our national history, in which our forefathers crafted their conservative immigrant traditions into a new home-grown revolutionary spirit, cherishing the respected ideals of the past yet aglow with confidence in the promise of a boundless future.
It's a ravishing moment, a distillation of the genius of Charles Ives and so very American.

Works:
Orchestral music, including 4 symphonies (1898, 1902, 1904, 1916), Three Places in New England (1914), The Unanswered Question (1908) and "The Fourth of July" (from A Symphony: New England Holidays, 1913)
Chamber music, including 2 string quartets and 4 violin sonatas
Piano music, including 2 sonatas (No.2 Concord, 1915)
Choral music and many songs, including "General William Booth Enters into Heaven" (1914) and "The Things Our Fathers Loved" (1917)

                      01.  Charles Ives – Symphony No. 2: I. Allegro moderato
                      02.  Charles Ives – Symphony No. 2: II. Allegro
                      03.  Charles Ives – Symphony No. 2: III. Adagio cantabile
                      04.  Charles Ives – Symphony No. 2: IV. Lento maestoso
                      05.  Charles Ives – Symphony No. 2: V. Allegro molto vivace
                      06.  Charles Ives – Symphony No. 3, "The Camp Meeting": I. "Old Folks Gatherin". Andante maestoso
                      07.  Charles Ives – Symphony No. 3, "The Camp Meeting": II. "Children's Day". Allegro
                      08.  Charles Ives – Symphony No. 3, "The Camp Meeting": III. "Communion". Largo
                      09.  Leonard Berstein Discusses Charles Ives

                      指挥：Leonard Bernstein 伯恩斯坦
                      乐团：
                      New York Philharmonic 纽约爱乐管弦乐团
                      London Symphony Orchestra 伦敦交响乐团(61,90)
                      Royal Danish Orchestra 皇家丹麦管弦乐团(74)
                      Columbia Symphony Orchestra 哥伦比亚交响乐团(89)

      这套是为了纪念伯恩斯坦（1918年8月25日--1990年10月14日）逝世20周年，特别发行的珍贵限量套装。收录的作品以交响曲为标的，涵盖音乐史上三百年来重要的作品，包含贝多芬、布拉姆斯、舒曼、西贝流士、马勒、西贝流士与伯恩斯坦本人的交响曲全集，同时也收录其他作曲家的主要作品。
      套装内容主要是伯恩斯坦担任纽约爱乐管弦乐团音乐总监时期前后的交响曲录音。伯恩斯坦于1958-1969年担任纽约爱乐的音乐总监，十余年的时间，完成许多令人称道的作品。
      专辑录音最早始自1953年的沙佩罗（Shapero）的交响曲，以至1976年录制的萧士塔高维契第14号交响曲「死亡之歌」与圣桑第3号交响曲「管风琴」，横跨四分之一个世纪的辉煌记录。
      全套六十张CD，採LP尺寸包装，精致的盒装与32页的原文解说，大大提升专辑的珍藏价值。

                      唱片公司：SONY & BMG
                      产品编号：886976836528
                      专 辑 数：60CD
                      发行时间：2010-10-8
                      市场价格：￥1275元