# 100 Favorites: # 41



## JACE (Jul 18, 2014)

*Charles Ives: Songs
Jan De Gaetani, Gilbert Kalish (Nonesuch)*










From my Charles Ives web site:

_"Charles Ives' song legacy presents a unique set of challenges to its interpreters. Ives' songs derive from an enormously wide variety of musical traditions, from the German lied tradition (and European art song in general), to American parlor songs, hymns, and folk tunes. In addition, Ives' own relentless experimentation, which often bore little resemblance to anything that preceded him, led to a body of works that still presents formidable obstacles to any performer, regardless of their background. In short, how many singers are capable of singing like Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau one moment and an authentic Texas cowboy the next? What's even more difficult: Ives' greatest songs typically don't come from any clearly defined performance tradition, so the performer must internalize them and come up with something new, a kind of Ivesian cultural synthesis encompassing almost everything: high and low, new and old, secular and sacred, comical and serious, American and Universal.

Aside from stylistic variety, Ives' songs also call for an enormous range of emotional responses: from mystical meditations on God and Nature to sentimental recollections of days gone by; from sarcastic, bombastic political commentary to the innocent, wide-eyed wonder of a child. The songs' broad emotional spectrum presents yet another challenge to any artist who chooses to perform them.

This [recital by Jan DeGaetani & Gilbert Kalish] is my favorite recording of Ives' songs. It really is a stunning disc in every way. DeGaetani has a completely idiomatic command of Ives' musical language, and she makes the 'impossible' songs sound effortless, even natural. She also has a special way with the strange, otherworldly elements in Ives' music, and she taps into these qualities in his music more convincingly than anyone else. Moreover, Kalish's support is phenomenal. This recording is an excellent introduction to Ives' songs because it demonstrates the broad range of musical styles that Ives employed in the genre, from sentimental remembrances ("The Things Our Fathers Loved") to leaping dissonances ("The Majority"). DeGaetani also marvelously sings my two of very favorite Ives songs on this disc: "The Housatonic at Stockbridge" and "Serenity." This one rates as high as they get."_


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