Composer: Charles Ives
Performer: Gerald Finley, Julius Drake
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Hyperion
Catalogue: CDA67516
Release: 2005
Size: 239 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. Feldeinsamkeit
02. The Things Our Fathers Loved
03. Memories A “Very Pleasant” & B “Rather Sad”
04. The Housatonic at Stockbridge
05. Swimmers
06. The Cage
07. The Greatest Man
08. General William Booth Enters into Heaven
09. Remembrance
10. Berceuse
11. West London
12. Tom Sails Away
13. When Stars Are in the Quiet Skies
14. Weil’ auf mir
15. Ich grolle nicht
16. Du alte Mutter
17. Where the Eagle
18. Walking
19. Yellow Leaves
20. The Side Show
21. Élégie
22. The New River
23. Like a Sick Eagle
24. Ann Street
25. Slugging a Vampire
26. Thoreau
27. Serenity
28. Tolerance
29. Charlie Rutlage
30. 1, 2, 3
31. A Song – For Anything
Charles Ivess work as a pioneering polytonalist is perhaps better remembered today than his song output, but throughout his long composing life his most personal musical expressions are to be found in what may best be called the genre of the art song. These range from traditional lieder (setting such familiar poets as Heinrich Heine and Nikolaus Lenau), through English-language songs of the period (Kipling, Keats, Bulwer-Lytton), to pioneering pop songs in the modern idiom, often to texts of Ivess own devising. All show a degree of craftsmanship which makes one wonder why many of these songs are not better known. Ives admitted to a deep mistrust of singerstheir insistence on interpreting any given score frequently, he felt, betrayed its composers intentions: not so with Gerald Finley and Julius Drake. These peformances perfectly encapsulate a lost world, transporting the listener back to a world where a sentimental ballad could happily share the stage with a pastiche on the Battle Cry for Freedom. This is Gerald Finleys first solo recital recording.