The Age of Anxiety hasn’t lacked for excellent recordings, specifically those by Litton/Kahane (Virgin) and Bernstein/Foss (Sony), not to mention Lenny’s two later recordings for Sony and DG respectively, both of which are also very fine. Marc-André Hamelin and Dmitri Sitkovetsky don’t quite reach the same level, and this becomes particularly evident in the second part’s “The Masque”, where for all the virtuosity on display you just wish the performers would relax and play with the music a bit more. Also, Sitkovetsky reigns in the closing pages just when a touch of healthy, triumphant vulgarity would have done the trick. Still, it’s a good performance, and the Bolcom coupling is marvelous. Hamelin has a field day with this Ivesian send-up of American patriotic and popular tunes both real and imagined, offering playing of startling brilliance and wit. Of course, the competition is non-existent here, and there’s always the possibility that someone someday may come along and do it better, but I’d hazard a guess that this version will more than hold its own against any future competitors. More to the point, the two works make for an extremely enjoyable and effective pairing, and have been very well recorded too.
