This is a quite amazing orchestral version of the well-known Ives piano sonata. Brant is the perfect choice to realize it as a symphonic work, being in his own way as much of an iconoclast as was Ives. The original sonata is unusual in Ives having provided optional parts for viola and flute at the end of the first and last movements respectively. So in a way it had already leaned toward expansion into the orchestral realms.
Brant began an interest in Ives’ quirky music in 1929 at age 15, and has studied it ever since. He had long felt the Concord Sonata would make a tremendous orchestral piece, though he was aware of the huge challenges he faced. He began with the last movement and slowly moved thru the work to the most difficult first movement. Inspired by the Transcendentalists of Concord, the four movements are titled Emerson, Hawthorne, The Alcotts, and Thoreau. Brant writes in the note booklet that his goal was to create a symphonic idiom which would present Ives’ astounding music in clear, vivid and intense sonorities. Well, the original piano music to my ears presents Ives’ ideas with the most clarity of all, but it is interesting to hear it expanded to the wide tonal abilities of the symphony orchestra.
To call the transcription dense would be quite an understatement; there is a great deal going on here, with no home key and little tonality to hang onto. Normally the Concertgebouw recordings are now being released on the orchestra’s own label and as SACDs, but it looks like the Ives Symphony was considered too unapproachable for that and thus it becomes part of the Innova label’s wide-ranging series devoted to the works of Henry Brant. I do feel that hi-res surround would be a great advantage in attempting to come to aural and intellectual terms with the Concord Symphony, but regardless we should be thankful that Innova has released the recording at all. Definitely for those willing to “stretch their ears,” as Ives himself used to put it!
– John Sunier
