As with his previous Unknown Ives release on CRI (no longer in print), pianist Donald Berman offers a superbly curated and wide ranging recital interspersing larger and shorter works that date from the composer’s childhood (the Minuetto Op. 4 composed at age 12) to his final creative period (the Three Quarter-Tone Pieces for Two Pianos). The opening salvo, Varied Air and Variations, subjects its unison octave theme to wild keyboard fantasies bracketed by musical depictions of catcalls and applause from an imaginary audience. Several fragmentary sketches are included among a selection of fingerbusting Studies. Seven boisterous marches dating from Ives’ early 20s incorporate popular tunes, including “Here’s to Good Old Yale”, in an edition that contains Berman’s transcription of Ives’ improvised variants in a 1943 recording (see Ives plays Ives by typing Q343 in Search Reviews).
Berman not only understands Ives’ volatile aesthetic but also feels it in his bones, and more importantly, is a fearless pianist with a huge, totally ambidextrous technique and big sound to match. Notice how in the Celestial Railroad (much of this music found its way into the Fourth Symphony’s second movement) Berman lets the turbulent sonorities rip without losing the melodic thread of the popular song quotations. It’s an altogether grander, more massively textured performance than Anthony De Mare’s relatively compact and pianistically oriented version on the CRI release “Wizards and Wildmen”.
Conversely, Berman’s sensitivity and sustaining power hold your attention throughout the ruminative Impression of the “St. Gaudens” in Boston Common (an early piano version of what eventually would become the first of the Three Places in New England for orchestra). Pianist Stephen Drury joins Berman for perhaps the most fluid, well balanced, and astutely characterized interpretation on disc of the Three Quarter-Tone Pieces. You could imagine warmer, less hollow piano reproduction, yet Berman’s enormous dynamic range certainly comes across. As usual, Berman contributes meticulously researched, insightful, and very readable booklet notes. I amend my enthusiastic recommendation with two questions that I hope will not remain “unanswered”: a) will Berman conclude his recorded Ives journey with the two Sonatas? b) will New World reissue The Unknown Ives Volume 1? [9/29/2005]
