However, even Debussy and Satie would have difficulty staking absolute claim to impressionism, thanks to the existence of a small number of unknown composers who found their way into the style independently, but at about the same time. Offered here are a couple of thumbnail sketches of two of the principal suspects.

Ernest Fanelli (1860-1917)
American composer George Antheil stated in 1945, “Ernest Fanelli was one of the greatest inventors and musical iconoclasts of all time.” As obscure and neglected a figure as one is likely to find in the annals of music, Fanelli was born in Paris to a family of Italian émigrés. Bounced out of the Paris Conservatoire early on, Fanelli studied privately under composer Leo Délibes and perhaps Charles Valentin Alkan. Fanelli remained in essence a self-taught composer, and for the majority of his life he would make his living as a timpanist, pianist, and music copyist, writing with no audience in mind and no intention of hearing his work performed. His major extant composition is the Tableaux Symphoniques d’apres le Roman de la Momie, (1882-83, and 1886) divided into two parts and based on the exotic novel The Romance of the Mummy by Théophile Gautier. Fanelli stopped composing entirely by 1895, when the need to support his family began to outweigh the urge to follow a purely creative direction.

Composer and conductor Gabriel Pierné discovered Fanelli in 1912, after being astounded with the advanced harmonic language of Fanelli’s music while reviewing an early orchestral score sent as a sample of Fanelli’s abilities as copyist. Pierné began to champion Fanelli’s music, but instead of achieving recognition as an unsung pioneer of then new currents, Fanelli found himself at the center of a bitter turf war waged among his fellow French musicians. Maurice Ravel privately accused Debussy of being a Fanelli imitator, and Debussy scrupulously avoided Fanelli at every turn, hoping to sidestep inevitable comparisons between Fanelli’s style and his own. It would not be long before that critics came to Debussy’s rescue, condemning Fanelli as an incompetent who had lucked into an impressionistic milieu by mere accident. By the time he died in 1917, Fanelli had already become as forgotten as he had been unknown before his discovery. Only one of his works was published, and when Swiss conductor Adriano began to seek out Fanelli’s scores in preparation for the Marco Polo volume devoted to him, only the two parts of the Tableaux Symphoniques d’apres le Roman de la Momie could be located; no other music by Ernest Fanelli seems to have survived.

Paul Gilson (1865-1942)
Belgian composer Paul Gilson was a key transitional figure between French post-romanticism, as exemplified by Vincent d’Indy, and impressionism. Like Fanelli, Gilson was primarily self-taught, and like Claude Debussy, he shared an enthusiasm for the music of Richard Wagner and the Russian “Five” then exemplified in continental Europe by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. In a long career that lasted until World War II, Gilson produced more than 500 compositions. Gilson’s symphonic poem La mer (1892) has never dropped out of the concert repertory in Belgium, and at one time, it was the second most famous Belgian orchestral work apart from César Franck’s Symphony in D minor. Divided into four parts and structured like a symphony, the piece was so well known that Debussy could hardly have avoided it, although his own symphonic poem La mer did not appear until 13 years later.

Not all four of Gilson’s symphonic sketches are fully invested in impressionist style; Chants et danses de matelots is rather squarely in the camp of Vincent d’Indy and other late French romantics. However, the final movement, “La Tempête,” looks forward rather than backward, and while it will never supplant the popularity of Debussy’s slightly later Prélude á l’après-midi d’un faune (1894), it shows that Gilson had arrived at an advanced impressionist orchestral idiom that Debussy was only taking baby steps toward in the Prélude. Although very few of Paul Gilson’s works have been recorded, based on what is out there, it appears that he didn’t follow up the innovations of La Tempête, at least not right away. Gilson’s music from the ballet La Captive (1900) demonstrates a deepening of interest in the orientalist style of Rimsky-Korsakov, but nothing more.

Nevertheless, all of this goes to show that familiar maverick works in classical music, specific works cited as instances where changes in musical style were spearheaded, are often really more like signposts along the main road. Once one embarks on the scenic route, all kinds of possibilities open up, both musically and historically.

Adriano, Slovak Radio Symphony - Fanelli: Tableaux Symphoniques d’apres le Roman de la Momie, Part 1
Adriano, Slovak Radio Symphony - Fanelli: Tableaux Symphoniques d’apres le Roman de la Momie, Part 2
Martyn Brabbins, Flemish Radio Orchestra - Gilson: La mer - Crepuscule
Martyn Brabbins, Flemish Radio Orchestra - Gilson: La mer - La Tempête

Kreisler: Tamborin Chinois
Scriabin / Szigeti: Etude in Thirds, Op. 8/10
Rimsky-Korsakov / Heifetz: Flight of the Bumble Bee
Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst: Erlkönig (after Schubert)

Francis Poulenc: Dialogues des Carmelites
Dialogues des Carmélites (1956) is recognized as one of the landmarks of 20th century opera. Poulenc’s tells the story of group of Carmelite nuns executed during the Reign of Terror. In spite of the grim subject, and one of the most viscerally shocking finales in opera, the music is largely characterized by an otherworldly serenity.
 
 
Dialogues des Carmélites: Mes filles, voilà que s’achève
Dialogues des Carmelites: Salve Regina (Finale)
 
 

Siegfried Matthus: Graf Mirabeau
The German composer Siegfried Matthus’ Graf Mirabeau (1989) is based on the life of Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, a moderate who sought a reconciliation between the Revolutionaries and the Monarchy. Like so many of his compatriots, he fell victim to the hysteria that overtook the country. Matthus’ clever libretto and inventive music make Graf Mirabeau one of the most appealing modern German operas
 
 

Gottfried von Einem: Dantons Tod
Gottfried von Einem’s Dantons Tod (Danton’s Death) was the first new German opera to be performed at the Salzburg Festival after the Second World War. Based on the play by Georg Büchner ( whose work also provided Berg the material for Wozzeck), the opera tells the story of the Revolutionary leader Georges Danton, who was executed during the Reign of Terror. Einem’s Post-Romantic expressionist score is descended from the tradition of Wozzeck.
 
 
Dantons Tod: Interlude
Dantons Tod: Danton! Danton!
 

John Corigliano: The Ghosts of Versailles
John Corigliano wrote The Ghosts of Versailles for the Metropolitan Opera in 1991, and it was one of their most elaborate premieres in many years, with an all-star cast. The librettist William Hoffmann created the fantastical story based on the characters in Beaumarchais’ The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro, and Hoffmann inserted Beaumarchais as a character into the opera. It has received numerous productions and has proved one of the most durable new American operas.
 
 
Phantasmagoria, suite from The Ghosts of Versailles
 
 
Daniel Bortz: Marie Antoinette
Swedish composer Daniel Börtz’s Marie Antoinette (1998) tells the dramatic story of the queen who was the most famous victim of the Reign of Terror. Börtz eclectic score uses a variety of styles, including 18th century music, to express the extremes of the protagonist’s fortunes.
 
Marie Antoinette: Excerpt
Marie Antoinette: Excerpt
 
 
Marie Antoinette: Ballroom Scene:

Blair Sanderson

Feldman: For Philip Guston
Julia Breuer, Matthias Engler, Elmar Schrammel

Morton Feldman composed his marathon chamber work, For Philip Guston (1984), as a tribute to the abstract expressionist painter and personal friend of the composer, who died in 1980. This profoundly meditative work, which runs over four hours and fills four discs in this 2008 Wergo release, is among the longest of Feldman’s late compositions, and is one of the purest in content and expression. The musicians on this recording — flutist Julia Breuer, percussionist Matthias Engler, and pianist Elmar Schrammel — play a varied assortment of instruments that nonetheless provides a fairly homogenous and shimmering palette: the piccolo, flute, and alto flute are complemented by glockenspiel, vibraphone, tubular bells, and marimba, with the pianist doubling on celesta.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor, “Tragic”
Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony

If a conductor and a piece of music can ever be said to be perfectly matched, then Valery Gergiev is ideally suited to direct Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 in A minor, “Tragic.” A work that calls for the brutally frank expressions, explosive sonorities, and vibrant colors that this Russian conductor specializes in, the Symphony No. 6 really achieves its full potential in this gut-wrenching performance with the London Symphony Orchestra. Rarely has a conductor reached such heights of ethereal beauty and depths of abject despair as Gergiev does here, and he inspires the orchestra to play as if everything in this concert performance depends on it; one can hardly believe that this is the same polished orchestra that regularly turns out soundtracks and popular albums, so credible are the grim resolution, raw energy, and searing emotions displayed here.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
Schmidt: Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln
Kristjan Järvi, the Wiener Singverein, and the Tonkünstler-Orchester

Franz Schmidt’s Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (The Book with Seven Seals) is a powerful setting of texts adapted from the Apocalypse of St. John for six vocalists, choir, organ, and orchestra, and was composed between 1935 and 1937, near the end of the composer’s career. In its most potent passages, this oratorio vividly depicts the cataclysmic events described in the Bible’s last book, but much of Schmidt’s music evokes the Romantic past and draws inspiration from the great works of his time, such as Richard Wagner’s operas and Richard Strauss’ tone poems, as well as Johannes Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem and possibly even Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
Schubert: String Quartet D 887; String Trios D 471, D 581
Prazák Quartet

Programming Franz Schubert’s String Quartet No. 15 in G major, D. 887 with the String Trio in B flat major, D. 581 and the single-movement String Trio in B flat major, D. 471 is a little like an absurd three-way brawl between a heavyweight boxer, a welterweight, and a featherweight; after the pummeling that the first delivers, the others really stand little chance of leaving much of an impact. Schubert’s final quartet is on the level of the profound String Quintet in C major and the Symphony No. 9 in C major, “The Great” in magnificent ambition and soulful expression, and this penetrating performance by the Prazák Quartet fully conveys that kind of greatness in its sustained intensity, heartfelt lyricism, and compelling, long-range vision.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
Xenakis: Orchestral Works, Vol. 5
Arturo Tamayo and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg

On the four previous installments in Timpani’s series of the orchestral works of Iannis Xenakis, Arturo Tamayo and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg have presented highly varied and volatile works from different periods of the composer’s career, and have provided an excellent overview of his output. This fifth volume focuses on the early orchestral works, which brought the architect and mathematician Xenakis world renown as a cutting-edge composer and put him in direct opposition to the serial establishment. The stochastic masterpieces, Metastaseis (1954) and Pithoprakta (1956), offered a viable alternative to the “total serialism” practiced at the time and were regarded as almost heretical in some quarters for pointing up the limitations of the post-Webern school.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
 
Uncle Dave Lewis

Gershwin: Complete Music for Piano and Orchestra
Anne-Marie McDermott

There are countless recordings available of Gershwin’s piano and orchestral music, particularly of Rhapsody in Blue; so for something to stand out it has to be really, very good. Bridge’s George Gershwin: Complete Music for Piano and Orchestra featuring pianist Anne-Marie McDermott with the Dallas Symphony under Justin Brown, is exactly that, and one would hazard to say it is the best digital recording yet made of this repertoire. The all too familiar Rhapsody gets off to a carefully managed start, but once the jazz section is underway, the performance kicks in and packs a wallop. McDermott’s piano is recorded in a very agreeable relation to the orchestral complement and is a little louder than usual, which is a plus. Second Rhapsody likewise packs a punch, and — for once — it is not treated as a second-string item to its more famous sister. The Dallas Symphony is crisp, bright, and on its toes through the whole recording, and tempi is a tad faster than usual in keeping with the sonically ancient but revelatory recordings Gershwin himself made of these works.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
Sinfonias from the Enlightenment
moderntimes_1800

The imaginatively named Austrian chamber group moderntimes_1800 was founded in 2003; this Challenge Classics release Sinfonias from the Enlightenment is its third release. Its two discs survey some especially important, and unfamiliar, eighteenth century symphonies, including the jewels in this particular crown: two sinfonias of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach completely unknown to either Wotquenne or Helm that surfaced as part of the missing Berliner Singakademie collection discovered in Kiev in 1999. The goal of moderntimes_1800 is to create a group that is proficient in both historic and modern literature and they play both original instruments and standard ones. The effect is a very pleasing, warm, and well-rounded sound that delivers the concision of a period instrument ensemble without sounding scrawny or errant in pitch.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
Brahms: Piano Quartets Opp. 25 & 60
Xiayin Wang and the Amity Players

Coming off a highly satisfying and successful debut in her first Marquis Classics release, Introducing Xiayin Wang, pianist Xiayin Wang needn’t have worried about the “sophomore jinx,” which primarily affects popular music artists and not the classical ones. The flavor of the month factor is not such a big deal in the classics; fans tend to be devoted for good for the run of an artist’s recordings, or simply are not fans of a given artist. Nevertheless, one might get the impression that perhaps Wang was looking to sidestep the sophomore jinx — much as Mahler avoided the fatal ninth symphony through composing Das Lied von der Erde instead — through making her second Marquis release a chamber album, rather than another solo outing as her first album had been. Marquis’ Xiayin Wang and the Amity Players features Wang in the first and third Brahms Piano Quartets in collaboration with the Amity Players, a Canadian trio of émigrés who, like Wang, are young and precociously gifted.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
Jennifer Koh: String Poetic
Jennifer Koh and Reiko Uchida

String Poetic — American Works: A 21st Century Perspective is the fifth album violinist Jennifer Koh has made for Çedille Records; here pianist Reiko Uchida, who is a member of Columbia University’s Moebius Ensemble, joins Koh in a recital of four works. A highly interesting program puts a challenge to received notions as to what shakes out in terms of twentieth century literature now that the border to the twenty first has been crossed. It combines the music of historic American “ultra-modernists” — composers marginalized during a period of serial dominance over the academies — with two darlings of postmodernism: John Adams and Jennifer Higdon. It is perhaps not surprising, but certainly musically satisfying, that some points of similarity appear along the way.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
Chen Yi/Karen Tanaka: Invisible Curve
The Azure Ensemble

The Azure Ensemble, led by flautist Susan Glaser and violist Karen Ritscher, is a chamber ensemble that has operated out of New York City since 1999 and their basic instrumentation consists of flute, viola, harp, piano and cello. While they do have a tiny repertoire of works drawn from established literature, they exist primarily to perform new music, and the post-1990 repertoire that they regularly play dwarfs the older stuff at a ratio of about three to one. On the New World disc, Invisible Curve, The Azure Ensemble essay chamber music of two contemporary Asian women composers, Chen Yi and Karen Tanaka. Chen Yi will be a known quantity to many followers of twenty-first century music; Karen Tanaka’s orchestral compositions have been performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and are played with some measure of frequency by the NHK Symphony in her native Tokyo.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
 
James Leonard

Foulds: A World Requiem
Leo Botstein and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus

John Foulds’ A World Requiem was the musical event of mid-’20s England. The work was premiered by the composer leading 1,250 singers and players assembled in the Albert Hall on Armistice Night, November 11, 1923, under the eyes of the Prince of Wales and the auspices of the British Legion and proved a tremendous critical and popular success. Its fusion of symphonic song cycle and Requiem Mass and its message of hope and transcendence resonated with the conscious of the Empire after the horrors of the Great War, and the work was repeated on each subsequent Armistice Night through 1926. Due to a change of leadership in the Legion and the composer’s outspoken socialism, however, A World Requiem was not performed on Armistice Night 1927 nor on any other night until this performance — on Armistice Night, November 11, 2007.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
Kapsberger: Lute Works
Paul O’Dette

One of those special discs where the combination of repertoire and performances is of such unerring quality that it can justly be called definitive, Paul O’Dette’s 1991 recital of lute works by Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger is as good as it gets.

Born in Venice, the Kapsberger was unsurpassed in his times as a lutenist. His published collections of works for his instrument were considered all but unplayable by anyone but himself at the time they were first published. Yet for all its difficulty, Kapsberger’s music is exceedingly attractive, full of ingratiating melodies, rich harmonies, and engaging forms.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
Beethoven: String Quartet; String Quintet
Sigiswald Kuijken, Wieland Kuijken, Marleen Thiers, Veronica Kuijken, and Sara Kuijken

“What we shared was astonishment — and joy,” wrote violinist Sigiswald Kuijken in his introductory note to this disc coupling Beethoven’s C major String Quartet, Op. 59/3, and C major String Quintet, Op. 29. The “we” referred to are this disc’s two generations of string-playing Kuijkens: violinist Sigiswald, cellist Wieland (Sigiswald’s brother), violist Marleen Thiers (Sigiswald’s wife), violinist Veronica, and violist Sara (Marleen and Sigiswald’s daughters). And the “joy” referred to is immediately apparent in their playing. Though best known for performing on period instruments, the Kuijkens perform here on modern instruments with tremendous energy and vivacity, though with only a discrete touch of vibrato. Indeed, it is this quality of joy, of the sheer pleasure in making music together, that most distinguishes the Kuijkens’ performances from all others.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
 
James Manheim

Mozart: Piano Concertos
Christian Zacharias and the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra

The partnership of veteran German pianist Christian Zacharias and the German audiophile label MDG has yielded some treasures, but this one, part of a Mozart piano concerto series, is going to be hard to top. Recorded at the Salle Métropole concert hall in Lausanne, Switzerland, the discs in this series have inspired audiophiles to great flights of technical prose. The sound has warmth, depth, and awesome detail, and the music simply reveals no blemishes under its rays. The strings of the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, of which Zacharias has been conductor since 2000, have the kind of sheen that comes only from a unit that has worked together over the long term.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
Charpentier: Te Deum; Litanies de la Vierge; Missa “Assumpta est Maria”
William Christie and Les Arts Florissants

Originally recorded in 1989, this disc remains a standout choice for listeners interested in beginning to explore the splendors of French Baroque music’s public side. Charpentier worked in Parisian churches attended by members of the French nobility, and much of his music was connected with state celebrations. The Te Deum, H. 146, although its exact origin is unknown, is a massive festival piece with trumpets, drums, and grand gestures all around. American-French conductor William Christie (call him Buffalo Bill) and his ensemble Les Arts Florissants give the music appropriate sweep. Part of Charpentier’s genius lies in the qualities of his contrasting sections for soloists and groups of solo singers: he does not simply alternate choruses and airs but balances pomp and sensuality.
 
Read the rest of the review
 

Patsy Morita

Apparition: Purcell and Crumb
Christine Schäfer

Christine Schäfer is an artist with a unique sense of style, which comes through unmistakably on Apparition. First is the cover of Schäfer in a white gown standing with a dinosaur skeleton winding around her like a miniature roller coaster would. Then there’s the fact that she and pianist Eric Schneider mix songs by Henry Purcell and George Crumb, two composers you might never expect would have anything in common, but incredibly, the idea works amazingly well. A lot of the success is due to her wonderful voice and the consummate musicianship of them both. Schäfer understands the music both technically and emotionally. There is nary a fault to be found in their performance, and because of that, it’s hard not to admire the music and the way it’s presented, regardless of how you feel about either composer.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
 
Stephen Eddins

Boldemann, Gefors, Hillborg: Orchestral Songs
Anne Sofie von Otter

If it were possible for a CD to receive a rating that’s off the top of the scale of five stars, this one would deserve it. These three sets of orchestral songs by contemporary Swedish composers inspire superlatives: they are gloriously expressive, emotionally riveting, and orchestrally brilliant, with challenging but soaringly effective vocal writing. Each has immense musical integrity and is heartstoppingly beautiful. The remarkable performances of these extraordinary pieces, by Anne Sofie von Otter and Kent Nagano, leading the Gothenburg Symphony, make this an outstanding release.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
Zimmermann: Die Soldaten
Michael Gielen and Gürzenich-Orchester Köln

The conventional wisdom in German-speaking countries (and even beyond) is that Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten is the most important opera to be written since Wozzeck, and based on its topicality, its seriousness, the musical and intellectual rigor of its construction, its dramaturgical innovations, and its visceral emotional impact, it’s hard to argue with that assessment. Comparisons with Wozzeck are inevitable: the musical language is similarly spiky, although Zimmermann’s opera is entirely serial (except for some interpolated idioms, like jazz and chorale tunes), with serial techniques extending even to the scenic elements and the larger musical structure; like Berg, Zimmermann uses traditional musical forms (chaconne, toccata, nocturne, ricercar, etc.) to give shape to the scenes; the subject matter is the brutalizing effect of military culture and the story is wrenchingly sad.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
Boccherini: Madrid
Ophélie Gaillard and Pulcinella

Luigi Boccherini spent the bulk of his life in Spain, and although he at one point held the position of court composer for Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, he exercised those compositional duties in absentia. It was in Madrid that he wrote the majority of the works for which he is remembered. He was one of the great cello virtuosi of all time, and on this album, cellist Ophélie Gaillard leads the chamber ensemble Pulcinella in a spirited romp through a selection of his works. What is most immediately striking about these performances is the sense of delight and gleeful abandon that the performers bring to these pieces. Even the concert aria “Se d’un amor tiranno,” with a text, which, on paper, looks like a lament for lost love, sounds for all the world in Boccherini’s setting and in this exuberant performance, like a playful cajoling, with the singer having every confidence of winning back a straying lover.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
Martin: Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke
Christianne Stotijn, Jac van Steen and the Orchester Musikkollegium Winterthur

Much to Rainer Maria Rilke’s dismay, his 1899 extended prose poem, “Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke,” was a magnet for composers, and the author is on record as having only contempt for musical settings of his work. Nonetheless, composers have continued to overlook Rilke’s wishes, creating pieces based on the writing as diverse as Henri Sauguet’s song cycle, Viktor Ullmann’s orchestral work with speaker, and Siegfried Matthus’ opera. The setting that has most firmly established itself is Frank Martin’s 1943 hour-long cycle for contralto and orchestra, a work that affirms Martin’s status as an unjustly neglected master of the mid-twentieth century. Martin’s music doesn’t have a flashy surface, and he lacks the uniquely recognizable voice of someone like Hindemith or Poulenc or Copland, but the psychological insights he brings to his music, particularly to his narrative works, have a profound integrity and a stunning dramatic impact.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
Puccini: La Bohème
Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón

It is easy to approach an album that’s been hyped to the extent this one has with a certain amount of skepticism. Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón are superstars and have made a much-praised album of duets, so their pairing in La Bohème (after their 2005 Traviata) has been touted as a major recording event. It’s a pleasure to report that the result fully lives up to the high expectations it promised. The whole enterprise sounds so youthful and impetuous that it makes it possible to hear the opera in a new way. Puccini, of course, wrote the youthful impetuosity into the score, but it has rarely felt so authentically spontaneous and artless.
 
Read the rest of the review
 
 

Pennario was an ideal pianist for the modern era; a player who was at his best in the muscular, strongly rhythmic music of composers like Miklós Rózsa, Maurice Ravel, Bela Bartók, Sergei Prokofiev, and Louis Moreau Gottschalk. However, it was the nature of the record market in his time that there was seldom a call for such material; in the 1950s, even Ravel was considered a specialized taste. Yet Pennario managed to record far more of such music than perhaps Capitol would have preferred. Apart from a brief excursion to RCA Victor in the 1960s, Pennario remained on the roster at Capitol until parent company EMI closed the L.A.-based classical division in the 1980s. Although he toured internationally in 1952, his concert career was mostly played close to home, concentrated in the 48 states and Hawaii.

As Pennario’s great popularity began to decline in the 1960s, one might expect the critics to weigh in with continued appreciation of his work, but they did not. The reason most often cited was that in the bread and butter of classical piano literature -– Schumann and Chopin, admittedly the material piano fanciers most often seem to want to hear –- what Pennario offered was more like Melba toast than German chocolate cake. It was technically secure, but not parceled out in gooey rubato and replete with a great many obvious personal touches. That was not the area, however, of Pennario’s strength as pianist -– he could deliver music pretty much as it appeared on the printed page, with no fuss and no muss. Technical considerations of playing didn’t matter to Pennario, and composers were quick to notice his ability; Miklós Rózsa wrote both a piano concerto and a sonata for Pennario. Those who criticize Pennario for being too cold are missing his uncanny sense of timing, tempo, and his extremely subtle sense of expression -– values that were premium in the movie-making community in which he lived and sometimes worked. Overall, Pennario has not been well served on CD reissues, though MSR Classics broke the mold through its 2006 release of a three-disc set, Leonard Pennario: The Early Years, which culls the Capitol Classics catalogue for some of his outstanding monophonic recordings.

Pennario’s last hurrah in the mass media occurred in 1987, when he was featured on a nationally televised broadcast from Lincoln Center given in observance of the 50th anniversary of the death of George Gershwin, although he continued to concertize in Los Angeles through 1993. His later years were marked with a struggle with Parkinson’s disease, yet as long as he was able, Pennario pursued his other great passion: contract bridge. His all-night bridge playing parties were reputed as the stuff of legend, and Pennario was named a Life Master in 1980, even though he remained an amateur.

Pennario with Felix Slatkin and the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra - Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue
Ravel: Gaspard de la nuit - Scarbo
Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition - The Hut on Fowl’s Legs
Bartók: Piano Sonata
Rósza: Piano Sonata
Pennario: Midnight on the Cliffs

An impressive gallery of many of Pennario’s LP covers may be found here.

Lost Highway might seem like an odd choice for adaptation to the operatic stage. By almost any measure, the film would be categorized as a “cult classic,” one of the darkest, most disturbing, and most narratively obscure films by any major director. The subject of endless debate, the film raises questions about reality versus fantasy and offers few certainties about its meaning. It leaves the viewer wondering not only “What was that supposed to mean?,” but “What just happened?” The film involves an affluent, unhappily married California couple, Fred and Renée Madison, who receive a series of increasingly intrusive and creepy videotapes, which someone has taken inside their house while they slept. At a party, Fred meets a Mystery Man, who has the unnerving ability to be two places at once — at the party and inside the Madison’s house — simultaneously. The next day Fred receives a videotape of himself, bloodied, beside Renée’s mutilated body, but he has absolutely no recollection of it. He’s sentenced to death for her murder. One day, the prison guards discover that the man in his cell is not Fred, but a young mechanic named Pete Dayton. Pete has no idea of how he came to be in prison; he’s released, and returns to his job in a garage, but detectives follow his every move. He disastrously falls in love with Alice (a thinly disguised version of Renée), the mistress of his sinister and violent mobster client, Mr. Eddy. To escape Mr. Eddy’s wrath, Alice leads Pete on a murderous crime spree and then abandons him in the desert, where Pete is somehow transformed back into Fred Madison. Fred discovers Alice in a motel room with Mr. Eddy, kidnaps him and takes him into the desert. They fight, and Fred cuts Mr. Eddy’s throat as the Mystery Man looks on, videotaping everything. The movie ends with Fred, pursued by the police, fleeing down the desert highway.

Lost Highway trailer

 
 
Lynch’s movie is a marvel of visual and thematic leitmotifs that often obscure, rather than clarify meaning or relationships. It’s so packed with barely glimpsed images, mysterious connections, and enigmatic details (that may or may not be significant) that it demands to be seen repeatedly. Lynch has vigorously asserted that the movie can’t (and shouldn’t) be comprehended on a rational level. If it has a logic, it’s an intuitive logic that would lose its essence and mystery if it could be explained.

Since music can do its most powerful work on a subconscious level, Lost Highway makes an entirely logical choice for an opera. And based on the resulting piece, it’s clear that Neuwirth was just the composer to make it work. She succeeds because she takes the same approach to the material as Lynch does; her music doesn’t “clarify” the story, or tie plot elements together, but it operates on the same subliminal, non-rational level as the film, enriching it with yet another layer of mystery. Like the film, the music may not make sense to you, but you know that you’ve been punched in the gut.
 
 
Neuwirth has the sure dramatic instincts of a natural opera composer. She knows how to shape a scene and build tension over the course of an act, even though her musical language may be unfamiliar. She packs a full arsenal of modernist techniques and has the instincts to use them with effectiveness. She works largely in atmospheric, woozy clouds of sound, made up of bending pitches, drones, slithering glissandos, and extensive electronics, all of which create a disorienting sense of vertigo. Lynch creates a sense of mystery and extreme unease with the strangeness of his visual imagery, while Neuwirth achieves the same effect with her music. One reason the opera is so gripping is that Neuwirth’s use of sound is closely analogous to Lynch’s use of visuals.

Her use of the voice is especially compelling. Sometimes there is a consistency to her decisions; for instance, Fred and Renée only speak, while Pete and Alice sing. But there are enough irrational choices to keep the listener off balance about what exactly is going on and why. The male characters frequently veer into falsetto, and the alternation of Sprechstimme with bel canto coloratura singing is dizzyingly disconcerting. Pete’s attempted seduction of Alice before she tells him, “You’ll never have me,” is accompanied by a Monteverdi madrigal that sounds absolutely perplexing and brilliantly appropriate at the same time.
 
 
Elfriede Jelinek collaborated with Neuwirth on the libretto. One would think that with a screenplay consisting of so few words and such sparse dialogue that it would have made sense simply to set it to music as is. Jelinek’s sensibilities are as eccentric as Lynch’s (as are Neuwirth’s also, apparently), and the libretto sometimes ramps up the perversity of the screenplay. The librettists take the script and re-imagine its narrative freshly for the stage. Much of the dialogue is retained, but some details are changed, and the order of some events is shifted in light of how they would play best in a live context.

One intriguing thing about the film-opera relationship is the fact that the opera is shorter than the film by over half an hour. This is an anomaly, because generally operas are considerably longer than plays on which they are based; composers and librettists almost always cut out huge chunks of text to make for a manageable evening-length piece. Neuwirth manages to shorten the work without making the material feel compressed and perfunctory, as operas can sometimes do, when all of the text except for what is absolutely essential for carrying the narrative forward has been trimmed away. Neuwirth is able to shorten the playing time because she understands and skillfully manipulates the difference between visual and auditory experience. Lynch frequently takes considerable time creating suspense and establishing a mood by slowly accumulating images, and this accounts primarily for the film’s length, while a single aptly placed sonority may be as effective in establishing a comparable mood.

Jelinek and Neuwirth, while cutting a line here or there and omitting most of Pete Dayton’s backstory, actually add some dialogue. Their most extravagant addition also involves the only significant alteration to the narrative. They replace Mr. Eddy’s explosive road rage at a tailgating motorist with an equally violent confrontation with a customer he finds smoking in Arnie’s garage. The librettists probably made the change because car chases are notoriously difficult to pull off onstage, but their change gives the scene additional emotional weight; Mr. Eddy’s tirade and his mauling of the victim constitute the longest scene in the opera, with a total of over 50 lines, as opposed to the 15 or so in the film. It’s also the most vocally virtuosic scene in the opera and, in a way, the work’s centerpiece. Jelinek can be a brutal writer, and the scene gives her a chance to unleash the character’s savagery even more explicitly than the film does. Neuwirth’s setting of the scene is a knockout; the eccentricity and unpredictability of her music make it even more terrifying and exhausting than the film. When Mr. Eddy is done with five minutes of kicking, growling, shrieking, moaning, and howling, he turns to the horrified Pete, and sings apologetically in the most angelic falsetto, “Sorry about that Pete, but I just cant stand it when people don’t obey the rules; it’s one of the worst things I can think of.” The shocking scene is immediately followed by Mr. Eddy’s return to the garage with Alice, accompanied by a riff on the song, “This Magic Moment.” Neuwirth’s music here is dazzlingly sensual and overtly erotic. If proof were needed of Neuwirth’s absolutely sure musical and dramatic instincts, the power of these juxtaposed scenes should do it.

The film’s soundtrack was written largely by Angelo Badalamenti, one of Lynch’s favorite collaborators, and also includes songs performed by David Bowie, the German industrial metal band, Rammstein, Trent Reznor, Lou Reed, and Barry Adamson. Badalamenti’s ominous soundscapes are the perfect accompaniment to Lynch’s dark imagery, but they are so low key that they rarely draw attention to themselves. The amorphous, subliminal creepiness of his score make it clear that he has absorbed some of the same modernist techniques as Neuwirth. Neuwirth doesn’t mimic the sound of the film, but some moments, like the Badalamenti-esque treatment of Alice’s entrance mentioned above, sound like an homage to the searing cool jazz that’s the hallmark sound of much of Badalamenti’s work for Lynch.

Badalamenti: Lost Highway: Fred and Renée make love

Badalamenti: Lost Highway: Dub driving

Badalamenti: Lost Highway: Police
 
 
Lynch’s film has a surreal intensity and strangeness that limits its appeal to only the most adventurous film buff, and will probably keep it from ever having broad public acceptance. The same could be said for Neuwirth’s and Jelinek’s opera. This is not a piece that will attract fans of the standard repertoire — anyone who’s put off by Wozzeck, for instance (and even some fans of Wozzeck), may be shocked by the opera’s brutality and gruesome details. (Mr. Eddy’s extended death scene may be the most musically graphic and disturbing in any opera.) The opera works because it doesn’t try to be a reverential re-creation of the original, decorating it with music, without adding anything essentially new to it — an approach that’s the downfall of many new operas based on pre-existing sources. It amplifies the film’s eccentricities by adding a layer of music that’s as shocking and unpredictable in aural terms as the film is in visual terms. For the adventurous opera lover, with open ears and a willingness to explore a demanding level of dramatic and musical intensity, or for the fan of the film interested in experiencing it from a fresh perspective, the operatic Lost Highway can be chillingly effective.

Neuwirth: Lost Highway: Opening

Neuwirth: Lost Highway: Fred meets the Mystery Man at the party

Neuwirth: Lost Highway: Mr. Eddy’s rage

Neuwirth: Lost Highway: Alice comes to the garage with Mr. Eddy

Neuwirth: Lost Highway: Alice and Pete meet

Neuwirth: Lost Highway: Pete gets ready to rob Andy

Neuwirth: Lost Highway: Ending — Fred flees down the highway
 
 
Three short experimental films made in conjunction with the 2008 English National Opera production of Lost Highway:

Captain’s Log: Land Date July 16, 1888
This was the day that NRK, during his summer vacation, completed the first movement of Scheherazade, “The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship,” while situated at his dacha on Lake Cheryemenyetskoye. The voyage that led him there was a long and arduous one; just four years earlier he was finally relieved of his obligations to the Russian Navy, which he had entered as a cadet at the age of 12, moving up from officer to inspector of military bands in a career lasting 30 years. In 1871, he had joined the staff of the newly formed St. Petersburg Conservatory as a professor and in the interim had worked both full-time jobs. In the years leading up to Scheherazade, he had written and published a harmony textbook, worked as an assistant to Balakirev at the Royal Chapel, and had tidied up –- Rimsky-style — unfinished works of his friend Modest Mussorgsky, who had died in 1881. NRK’s most recent success — the opera Snegurochka (”The Snow Maiden”), had also been in ‘81, and by 1885, NRK was beginning to wonder if he might not be “written out.” The institution of a series of Russian symphony concerts by philanthropist and music lover Mitrofan Belyayev helped put new wind into NRK’s sails; in 1887 and 1888, NRK wrote the three orchestral works for which he is known best -– Capriccio Espagnol, the Russian Easter Overture, and Scheherazade; in the last case, NRK laid down his pen on August 4. NRK led the premiere of Scheherazade himself in St. Petersburg on October 28. The following year repeated it at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, where it was heard by Claude Debussy. Debussy would later redirect its influence into his own work, La mer (1903-05).

Ship’s Navigation Map
The inspiration for Scheherazade came from the Persian 1001 Nights (or Arabian Nights) although NRK likely read them in a French or English translation, as the seven voyages of Sinbad are not to be found in the original Persian sources. Scheherazade is the daughter of a vizier who has routinely executed his wives owing to his distaste for what he perceives as the inherent unfaithfulness of women. As he runs out of prospective brides, Scheherazade offers herself to him, but tells him a story nightly without revealing the ending, thus keeping herself among the quick for the better part of three years. NRK selected only a handful of tales to work into four movements which he subtitled “The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship,” “The Tale of the Kalender Prince,” “The Young Prince and the Young Princess,” and “Festival at Baghdad; The Sea; The Ship Breaks against a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman.”
NRK put a lot of thought into whether Scheherazade was a symphony or not, but in the end, he decided on the novel form of “symphonic suite.” He had already written three symphonies, none of which he’d considered successful. Although Scheherazade is sometimes referred to as a “symphonic poem,” this is not entirely accurate –- it is a suite of four related symphonic poems, of which the last is not wholly independent as it brings material from the first movement back around, at a much slower tempo, to serve as a coda and conclusion. While César Franck’s Symphony in D Minor (1886-88) is generally adjudged the work that introduced “cyclical form” to Western symphonic music, NRK –- who cannot have known the Franck in 1888 –- does employ this device in Scheherazade. Some commentators also note a resemblance to Richard Wagner in “The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship” owing to NRK’s use of key relationships and modulation. While NRK felt a definitive impact from the work of Wagner, he did not encounter Wagner’s music until he toured to Western Europe in 1889.

Scheherazade is the only work in NRK’s catalogue that follows this scheme, and few composers have adopted the format since — Debussy in La mer, Gustav Holst’s The Planets and Charles Koechlin’s sprawling Les Bandar-Log being among relatively rare and noteworthy examples. All of NRK’s subsequent symphonic suites were extracted from his operas and, in a sense, his work as a composer of original orchestral music ended with Scheherazade.

Latitude and Longitude
NRK, being the former Navy officer that he was, plotted the course of Scheherazade very meticulously -– all four movements are set to sail for about ten minutes each, with an allowance for two and a half extra minutes to accommodate the coda in the last movement. However, no one plays the work quite this fast -– ten minutes’ duration is a little tight in the first movement, definitely too stingy for the second, and rather long for the third. Concerning recorded performances, a good indicator of how a given recording might perform is to look at the timing of the first movement; remember, in the coda the recap of the music from “The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship” in the last movement has to be slower than in the first in order to bring the vessel safely into port.

In performances of Scheherazade, there are two European-bred traditions, which we will call the “Russian” (or Slavic) and “French” traditions. The Russian tradition -– which German orchestras often follow — leans towards slower tempi and a more luxuriant string sound, and this works well for “The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship,” but can tend to be a little ponderous in “The Young Prince and the Young Princess.” Slowest of all is arch-Russian conductor Yevgeny Svetlanov, whose “The Young Prince and the Young Princess” lasts 12 minutes. The French tradition favors a bit quicker tempi, but much attention is paid to the tone quality of the winds, which in French orchestras means well-rounded horns and a fat quality to the bassoon in the second movement. The downside of the French approach can be a thin, bright sound to the string section, but this is not always a rule.

Departed legions of captains demonstrate more of a variety of approach in Scheherazade than skippers of more recent vintage. Leopold Stokowski and Ernest Ansermet –- both firmly within the French tradition and strongly associated with Scheherazade -– recorded it many times; Stokowski’s final version was made when he was 93. Herbert von Karajan was rare among German conductors in that he also recorded it several times (some German maestros find Scheherazade a less than serious outing and won’t even deal with it), and Karajan’s version focuses almost entirely on storytelling and exposition of melodic ideas. Fritz Reiner only recorded it once, and yet his RCA Living Stereo version remains extremely potent, even after nearly 50 years. Reiner’s timing scheme is particularly quirky: he has a very fast first movement and very slow third, a recipe for disaster one might think, but it for some reason known only to Reiner and Chicago, it is not. Both Karajan and Reiner’s readings are unique and belong to no discernable tradition.
 
Leopold Stokowski, London Philharmonic: The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship
Ernest Ansermet, L’Orchestre du Suisse Romande: The Tale of the Kalender Prince
Herbert von Karajan, Berlin Philharmonic: The Young Prince and the Young Princess
Fritz Reiner, Chicago Symphony Orchestra: Festival at Baghdad
 
 
At one time, Leonard Bernstein’s 1958 version with the New York Philharmonic was widely viewed as the Scheherazade to own, at least in the United States. His vision represents a rather homogenized “Americanization” of the work, laid out in big Hollywood hues and distinguished by superb violin solos by John Corigliano, father to the Academy Award winning composer of that name. However, the passage of time reveals a reckless impulsiveness, though some may well interpret this phenomenon as excitement. In terms of approach, however, Bernstein’s concept represented a new wrinkle: versions by Lorin Maazel (who has also recorded Scheherazade multiple times), Riccardo Muti, and Zubin Mehta are in line with Bernstein’s spirit: a Scheherazade from the perspective of the jet set, designed for similar results without regard to where it is played.
 

Leonard Bernstein, New York Phiharmonic: The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship
Zubin Mehta, Israel Philharmonic: The Tale of the Kalender Prince
Lorin Maazel, Berlin Phiharmonic: The Young Prince and the Young Princess
Riccardo Muti, The Philaharmonia Orchestra of London: Festival at Baghdad

 
Whereas the French tradition may have dominated the analog era, in the digital era it is the Russian/Slavic side of the equation -– represented in the distant past mainly by Antal Dorati and Kiril Kondrashin -– that has come to the fore. Digital recordings featuring conductors such as Loris Tjeknavorian, Kees Bakels, Yuri Temirkanov, Mariss Jansons, Sir Charles Mackerras, and Valery Gergiev are planted in Russian soil and certainly do not suffer for that; some would argue that this is the only “right” way to interpret Scheherazade. By 2008, however, the French, and to some degree the more cinematic American interpretations seem authoritative enough in their own right to quality as valid; it is up to you, the listener, to decide what might work best.
 

Kees Bakels, Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra: The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship
Yuri Temirkanov, New York Philharmonic: The Tale of the Kalender Prince
Sir Charles Mackerras, London Symphony Orchestra: The Young Prince and the Young Princess
Valery Gergiev, Kirov Orchestra: Festival at Baghdad
 

Traveling to Distant Shores
For those already committed to a given Scheherazade, it might be worth considering some interesting alternatives to the usual. NRK –- not a great pianist, though his wife Nadezhda Purgold was one –- made his own four-hand arrangement that makes for fulfilling listening, even if it is not so gracious to the hands of piano players. Among prehistoric recordings of Scheherazade, there are two movements only, recorded in 1919 by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under legendary violinist Eugene Ysayë; he also pitches in on the violin solos and may have been the only conductor in recording history to do so. Then there is Naxos’ 1001 Nights, in which narrator Bernard Cribbens interweaves an adaptation of the 1001 Nights stories into the course of a very well done, if a little hasty, performance of Scheherazade by Enrique Bátíz and the Philharmonia Orchestra of London. For the weirdo in your family, there is Scheherajazz, a brainstorm of arranger Skip Martin and Somerset Records producer David L. Miller. Miller took what is probably the worst recording ever made of Scheherazade, by the Orchester des Nordwestdeutschen Hamburg (also known as 101 Strings), and spliced in sections of jazz jams led by Martin, resulting in a disjointed mix of lukewarm square and semi-hip that is most certainly un-groovy.

The author remembers a time in childhood when Scheherazade was listened to every day, for a period of months, sometimes more than once in a day. While current circumstances do not permit such luxury, Scheherazade can sound good, like your favorite flavor of the month rock album, every day. We do not recommend, however, listening to “The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship” when suffering from a hangover. Nevertheless, a recording of Scheherazade, well chosen and suited to the tastes of a given listener, should serve as a cruise to the exotic that will last a lifetime.
 

Ferhan and Ferzan Önder: Festival in Baghdad (from 4-hand piano version)
John Kirby: Arabian Nightmare
Arthur Lyman Group: Scheherazade
Undercover Ska: Scheherazade

 
 
 
 
PS:
A conductor we wished had recorded Scheherazade, but never did: Sir Georg Solti.
A conductor and orchestra that probably should record Scheherazade: Paavo Järvi and the Cincinnati Symphony.

Ives once commented that he had written “seven symphonies,” once taken to mean the four numbered symphonies, Ives’ two completed orchestral “sets,” and the “Universe.” The Holidays Symphony was made up of movements conceived individually and only combined as an afterthought, one that Ives authorized but thought not very successful. The three large orchestral works Ives designated as “sets” are distinct from the ten suites of pieces Ives collected under the same rubric for chamber or theater orchestra. Naxos’s Charles Ives: The Three Orchestral Sets heralds the first complete rendering on record of the Orchestral Set No. 3, a late work that Ives worked on primarily between 1919 and 1926, although, as in the case of the Universe Symphony, occasional additions to the score were made into the 1950s. In 1919-26, however, Ives was incredibly busy with other projects: the compilation of 114 Songs and the first publication of the Concord Sonata, not to mention the creation of numerous other ambitious compositions including The Celestial Railroad, Four Transcriptions from “Emerson,” and the Three Pieces for Quarter-Tone Piano. That Ives found the time and energy to pursue all of this creative work in addition to holding down his full-time job as an insurance executive in the wake of a debilitating heart attack that permanently sapped his strength is, in itself, a seemingly superhuman achievement.

The “Sets” are performed expertly and authoritatively by conductor and chief Ives Society editor James Sinclair with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra; the Malmö’s Chamber Choir likewise joins in on the “From Hanover Square North” movement in the Orchestral Set No. 2. The Third Orchestral Set is not the only premiere on Charles Ives: The Three Orchestral Sets: three distinct versions exist of Orchestral Set No. 1, also known as “Three Places in New England,” the most familiar being a revision from about 1930 made at the request of Nicolas Slonimsky in a reduced orchestration. At one time, to achieve a “full orchestration,” conductors simply magnified and doubled parts from the chamber orchestra version, a practice that does not represent Ives’ intentions. Sinclair first edited and introduced the genuine full orchestration in the 1970s, which Ives had unwittingly endangered by cutting and pasting many of its parts into the smaller score. However, Sinclair uncovered the first (1913-14) version of the First Orchestral Set, which departs from the familiar one in many respects: it has a longer “Impression of the St. Gaudens in the Boston Common,” a shorter and more direct “Housatonic at Stockbridge,” and a less dense “Putnam’s Camp” with a number of variant readings. It is unlikely to overtake the later editions in terms of popularity –- the more developed “Housatonic at Stockbridge” is certainly to be preferred overall –- but, as in the case of all Ives’ variants, it is fascinating, and one is grateful to hear it at last.

As to the Orchestral Set No. 3, the first movement “Andante moderato” has been known for some time, recorded in 1979 for an obscure LP release along with some works of Roy Harris. This movement was always a tantalizing fragment that made one want to hear the whole; as Ives returns in it, for a final time, to the kinds of stacked arrangements of perfect intervals that distinguishes his 1907 orchestral piece Central Park in the Dark. Some aspects of this approach continue throughout remaining movements as well. The second movement “comedy of Danbury reminiscence” — as John Kirkpatrick referred to it — returns to the 1904 Overture and March 1776 to patch over some sections and is the weakest movement of the three. Its seamy, cut and paste structure is more glaringly apparent than in any other piece of Ives that uses a similar construction, and as such is a rare dud among his output. However, once finished it dovetails directly into Nors Josephson’s very well achieved realization of Ives’s third movement “Andante,” of which the source material is particularly scanty, but nevertheless yields a 13-minute movement that is one of Ives’ definitive statements, and perhaps the most valedictory one in his orchestral music. This is a transcendental conception par excellence, in which Ives revisits elements from various works, the Browning Overture most obviously, and weaves them into a dreamy, otherworldly and profound atmosphere that is uniquely his. Careful ears will pick out a short passage drawn from the Concord Sonata — is this the only time Ives ever tried to orchestrate from that work? If so, Henry Brant’s impulses to create a full orchestration of the Concord were on the right track after all.

One wants to be a little cautious regarding Jan Swafford’s assertion that the Orchestral Set No. 3 as “the most profound discovery of the many and ongoing efforts to reconstruct Ives’ incomplete works” as it is hard to imagine music that is more profound than the Universe Symphony. However, the multiplicity of solutions in regard to that work — and the intense disagreement among Ives’ editors as to what represents his intentions there — can be seen as a rather disconcerting development, although multiple viewpoints on its realization is what Ives wanted. The Orchestral Set No. 3 is, by comparison, sufficiently finite, recognizable as “Ivesian” and further confirms Charles Ives’ place as an American composer whose voice spoke to the whole world.