Naxos to Release another Ives Album with Sinclair

Cover of the album being discussed

Some readers may recall that I spent the early part of June in 2023 to “catch up” on Naxos recordings of orchestral works by Charles Ives conducted by James Sinclair. I have now learned that, one week from today, Naxos will release a new album in the series, entitled simply Orchestral Works. As many will probably expect, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders.

I must confess that I find myself a bit perplexed over what plans there may be behind Sinclair’s releases serving as an “Ives project.” Whatever that project may be, this new release seems designed to provide an “appendix” to the overall structure. Indeed, the longest track is entitled “Set of Incomplete Works and Fragments.” There are eighteen of them, sequenced by Sinclair working with Kenneth Singleton, who also shared editing duties with Sinclair. Most of the other tracks were entirely unfamiliar to me, with the exception of “March: The Circus Band,” which most Ives listeners will recognize in its version as a song for vocalist and piano accompaniment. Most enigmatic is the longest of the tracks, a little over six and a half minutes in duration, with the perplexingly prankish title “Chromâtimelôdtune.”

If there are not enough surprises in the opening seventeen tracks of seldom-encountered orchestral Ives (the one possible exception being the four opening “Ragtime Dance” tracks), even more surprising are the final three tracks of piano music that Ives arranged for orchestral performance. All of these will be familiar to those that follow piano recitals. The first is the first (in the key of D major) in the Trois Marches militaires set, D. 733 in the catalogue of the works of Franz Schubert. This is followed by the fourth episode (“Valse noble”) in Robert Schumann’s Opus 9 Carnaval cycle. The album then concludes with a second Schubert orchestration, this time the first (in the key of C minor) of the four impromptus collected in D. 899.

Regardless of how perplexed I may be, the fact is that, whenever I learn about a new Ives recording, I am more than likely to seek it out and add it to my collection. Ives may have been an “amateur” composer. I am almost certain that he never received much (if any) compensation for his efforts, leading me to raise both eyebrows at the portion of his Wikipedia page with the header “Musical career!” Nevertheless, there is no questioning that he belongs in the canon of “serious” composers, whose music is performed by symphony orchestras and chamber music ensembles. However, interpreting those “serious” compositions can often be challenging; and I am happy to say that, regardless of repertoire, Sinclair has more than satisfied me with his skills in bringing expressive interpretations to the notations and imaginative creations, many of which have more than their share of perplexing passages!