Between 1933 and 1943, Charles Ives recorded a series of private piano performances across four separate sessions - starting at the Columbia Gramophone Co., London, followed by studio visits in New York City using aluminium Speak-O-Phone, Melotone, and lacquer discs. These recordings were never meant for public release, capturing improvisatory studies, fragments, and embellishments of the "Emerson" movement from his Concord Sonata, alongside other early pieces.
The technicalities of the era's recording constraints posed a frustration for the composer. Limited to roughly four to five minutes per side on shellac and lacquer discs, Ives was forced to break up his playing, leading to interruptions, retakes, and candid outbursts, where he can be heard groaning or complaining about studio formalities and arbitrary stop-times. This collection attempts to piece together select recordings from these sessions in a sequence that feels at once spontaneous, unintentional and yet intentionally modern.
Selections from Ives Plays Ives, The Complete Recordings of Charles Ives at the Piano. Taken from private recordings in the Charles E. Ives Collection, Yale Music Library.
Issued under license from CRI/New World Records.
Whilst every effort has been made to record the subject in as great a degree of isolation as possible, the sound recordings you will hear on this record were made in a real working hospital and not under controlled conditions. Therefore, on occasion, you may hear some unavoidable background noise, conversations and other extraneous sounds.
