| Sonata No. 2, "Concord, Mass., 1840-60" I. Emerson John Kirkpatrick, piano. There's a few recordings of this piece floating around, but this is well worth a listen -- a long OOP recording (1968) by John Kirkpatrick, the man largely responsible for Ives' published legacy, and one of his earliest champions. He gave the first public performance of this piece in 1939, initiating a critical reevaluation (or first evaluation in many cases) of Ives' work. If you know the score well you may notice a number of revisions or "wrong notes"; Kirkpatrick put together his own version combining material from many different drafts, Ives' own improvisations, and his own taste, as Ives generally (and notoriously) saw the score as only the starting point. "It has seemed to the writer, that Emerson is greater -- his identity more complete perhaps -- in the realms of revelation -- natural disclosure -- than in those of poetry, philosophy, or prophecy. Though a great poet and prophet, he is greater, possibly as an invader of the unknown, -- America's deepest explorer of the spiritual immensities, -- a seer painting his discoveries in masses and with any color that may lie at hand -- cosmic, religious, human, even sensuous; a recorder, freely describing the inevitable struggle in the soul's uprise -- perceiving from this inward source alone, that every 'ultimate fact is only the first of a new series'; a discoverer, whose heart knows, with Voltaire, 'that man seriously reflects when left alone ... |
