CHARLES IVES : Robert Browning Overture • Symphony No. 2 (Kenneth Schermerhorn) (2000) FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

Ives's Second Symphony (assembled from some earlier church preludes and secular overtures around 1900-02, with its symphonic substance and orchestrations 1907-10 and final touches through 1950) is undoubtedly the most 'American' of symphonies. Drawing on patriotic marches, Stephen Foster tunes, gospel hymns, and a college song for most of its thematic material, it anticipates by three decades the homespun-flavored works of Virgil Thomson, Roy Harris, and Copland. The Symphony opens with a flowing fugato that within seven measures introduces Foster's Massa's in de Cold Ground. A second quote from the fiddle tune Pig Town Fling lightens the mood. The remainder of this introductory movement combines these elements with the main motif from Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean. A gentle oboe recitative segues into Henry Clay Work's jubilant song Wake Nicodemus, the main thematic material of the second movement. Shifting freely from key to key, Ives fragments Work's song to use as symphonic development. The minor-key version of Bringing in the Sheaves is set in relief against Work's melody. A sweetly harmonized quote of the college hazing song Where O Where Are the Verdant Freshmen? - sounding a lot like the song Dixie - provides contrast The coda, a dizzying collage of tunes - Where O Where, Wake Nicodemus, and the hymn

Hamburg - brings the movement to its breathless conclusion. The third movement, Adagio cantabile, first saw light of day as the slow movement to Ives's First

Symphony but was withdrawn at Parker's request. Beginning solemnly, quotes from Beulah Land and Materna (now known as ‘America the Beautiful’) are joined to extend the theme. This is followed by an Andante episode based on the hymns Missionary Chant and Nettleton. A final statement of the Beulah/Materna group and a quiet horn call bring the movement to a close. Following the model of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, Ives introduces a cyclic return of his first movement to serve as his fourth movement - really an extended introduction to the finale. Beginning this with a lively passage reminiscent of folk fiddling, the Stephen Foster song Camptown Races is introduced in the horns, becoming the main theme of the movement. A trumpet blast of Reveille announces the coda, where Wake Nicodemus, Pig Town Fling, and Columbia are sounded simultaneously, climaxing in one of the greatest symphonic pies-in-the-face ever hurled by a composer at his audience.

Ives had originally planned a cycle of overtures called Men of Literature. Only the Robert Browning Overture was completed, sketches for others finding their way into the Concord Sonata and much else. If the Second Symphony is one of Ives's most accessible works, the Robert Browning Overture is one of his most challenging. Ives was never satisfied with his attempt to evoke what he described as Browning's 'surge into the baffling unknown' and later repudiated the work. Its mysterious introduction is interrupted by a seething passage in the strings and an angular, atonal march whose theme is played in a series of canons between brass, woodwinds, and strings. Following a highly dissonant climax, an Adagio provides some repose. The return to the opening material and an extended recapitulation of the densely scored, canonic march, climaxes with a long-held pedal G-sharp and a ferociously dissonant chord, resolving into one of Ives's 'shadow chords.' Brief overlapping solos for the brass take us into the densely polyrhythmic coda. The work shrieks to a stop, revealing the opening chords of the Adagio, played almost imperceptibly in the strings. Joshua Cheek

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CHARLES IVES (1874-1954)

Robert Browning Overture 00:24:48
Symphony No. 2

Orchestra –  Nashville Symphony Orchestra
Conductor –  Kenneth Schermerhorn