Anthony Philip Heinrich (1781 - 1861) came perilously close to being totally lost to the dustbin of American music history. As late as 1917, when more than 1200 pages of his writings and manuscripts (including some 350 compositions) were acquired by the Music Division of the Library of Congress, he had already been virtually totally forgotten. Yet, in the first half of the 19th century, he was clearly America's most prolific composer of "art" music, years - if not decades - ahead of Louis-Moreau Gottschalk and Stephen Foster. He was, in fact, America's first composer of art music based on the "European model," and as well, a composer during a time when this was hardly an encouraged endeavor. This latter fact clearly establishes him as a genuine "American maverick."

It is this latter point that led to my own discovery of Heinrich, while reading a new book by Michael Broyles, "Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music." Broyles dedicates an entire chapter to Heinrich, describing him as the second of such mavericks after the Colonial hymnody composer William Billings. Doing a little back-checking, I then realized that Heinrich had already been discussed, all the way back in 1974 (the year this recording was originally released) by none other than Neely Bruce (the director/pianist on this recording), in an essay titled "Ives and Nineteenth-Century American Music" that appeared in "An Ives Celebration" by H. Wiley Hitchcock and Vivian Perlis, published to celebrate the centennial anniversary of Charles Ives's birth. Both Broyles and Bruce made some points to the effect that Heinrich "anticipated" Ives by a good 7 to 8 decades in some important respects, most particularly in this first work of his, "The Dawning of Music in Kentucky" (1820). For this Ivesian, that was motivation enough to track down this CD.

The work is a grab-bag of songs, instrumental solos and (in a piece unfortunately not included in this album, called "Yankee Doodleiad"), a chamber instrumental ensemble probably not unlike the "theatre orchestra" groups so favored by Ives for many of his works. The connections to Ives are there, if one listens carefully: The songs, unlike their European counterparts of the time, are frequently made of disjunct (melodically disconnected) rather than conjunct (melodically stepwise continous) intervals, as do many of Ives's songs (and, as well, the songs of Stephen Foster). And the longest instrumental (piano) solo, "Banjo Quickstep," incorporates vernacular music (quotations from "Yankee Doodle," "God Save the King" and "Turkey in the Straw") into "art" music just as Ives, and Foster for that matter, were to do many years later.

The songs seem to come across best, and the singers are uniformly excellent, most particularly William Stone (baritone). The keyboard works suffer somewhat from both Heinrich's self-taught compositional style (he seemed to have little regard for "degree of difficulty" in his composing, often writing "lotsa notes" for their effect) and Neely Bruce's pianism, which, while good, is hardly extraordinary. Overall, there is a charming naiveté to the works that serves to place them in a time largely if not totally unfamiliar to us; while they represented the art music of their time, they are quite unlike European art music of that era. "Early Foster" seems a much more apt appellation than "early Ives."

Heinrich was to go on to write more and more complex (and technically difficult) orchestral music that diverged even more from the European art music model. In part, his eventual eclipse into obscurity was due to his music's technical difficulty, thanks to his being self-taught (and not at all conversant in matters of harmony and counterpoint as a result). But also in part American art music approaching the close of the 19th century took on more of the European-model aspect as composers of the Second New England School (George Chadwick, Horatio Parker and others) sought their training in Europe, in large part to satisfy the concertgoers of that later era who took their musical doses as provided to them by European conductors of the many newly-established symphony orchestras that simply did not exist in Heinrich's time.

Despite these negatives about Heinrich's compositional skills, this album is heartily recommended to those who, like me, wish to get a sense of music history - and musical progenitors - in America. Heinrich was, in every sense set out by Broyles in his book, an American maverick, if one who was almost totally lost to the ravages of changing tastes.

The transfer to CD from the 30-year-old originals is fine, and even includes two bonus songs not on the original Vanguard CD. Still, at only a little over 54 minutes, it is a shame that "Yankee Doodleiad" for chamber ensemble wasn't included. It might well have made the "Ivesian difference," and I frankly don't know where to turn to find this missing piece of "The Dawning of Music in Kentucky." It certainly sounds intriguing!

Elizabeth C. Patterson and her Gloriae Dei Cantores (Singers to the Glory of God) chorus had been total unknowns to me prior to about a year ago. The group had been brought to my attention then by Mark O'Connor's publicist, at which time he had been the guest artist on their "Appalachian Sketches" album. But that album, excellent as it was, turned out to be just the small tip of a significant iceberg in terms of choral singing, and particularly the American traditions of sacred choral singing over the last half-millennium.

I've since collected quite a few of their albums, and, to switch metaphors, this "Make His Praise Glorious" album may turn out to be the mother lode. Actually a religious choral community based on Cape Cod, MA, Gloriae Dei Cantores members have literally dedicated their lives to this music genre. In addition to recording at their "home base," they have also recorded frequently in Mechanics Hall, Worcester, MA and at Methuen Memorial Hall, Methuen, MA (where this particular recording was made). (For those who aren't familiar with the organ tradition in America, Methuen Memorial Hall is where the original organ in Boston's Symphony Hall found its "final resting place" after the formation of the Boston Symphony Orchestra rendered it redundant. Fully restored, reconstructed and revoiced in 1947, this organ is one of the finest historical organs in the U.S., and its permanent home-Methuen Memorial Hall-was built specifically for its properties, and for its perpetual preservation as well.)

The music on this album is as wide a variety of settings of the Psalms by 20th century American composers as one could ask for, covering a variety of liturgical points of view. Samuel Adler and Robert Starer (both Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria respectively who settled in the U.S and built significant careers in music afterwards) take their own individualistic approaches to their choices of psalms. Adler's, in English, is heroic, resplendent with two trumpets supporting the chorus. Starer's, in Hebrew, with piano accompaniment, are more reflective and smaller in scale, but equally well-done.

Alan Hovhaness's "Make a Joyful Noise" is a cantata in four parts based on Psalms 54, 55 and 66. Like much of Hovhaness's music, with its reflection of his Armenian roots, "Make a Joyful Noise" is otherworldly; simply a beautiful piece of writing. The opening Prelude is for trombone solo and organ; quite a piece by itself. The remaining three parts are the actual psalms; all three of them have the Methuen organ supporting the chorus and the second and fourth parts in addition have a brass quartet of two trumpets and two trombones. A joyful noise indeed!

There are four brief a capella motets set to psalms by David Pinkham, and excellent sacred choral works by Ronald A. Nelson, Howard Hanson and Randall Thompson. Thompson's setting of Psalm 23 ("The Lord is My Shepherd") is particularly beautiful, with the chorus accompanied by harp. (The booklet notes point out that Thompson set this for chorus plus optional organ, piano or harp. I believe that Elizabeth Patterson made a very wise choice in the harp option; it fits the music perfectly.)

All of the works already described were written in the middle third of the 20th century. All are readily accessible, and none could truly be called "modern." That description best fits the remaining work on the album,Charles Ives's setting of Psalm 90. Originally written in 1894, and possibly performed a few years later, when Ives was organist at the Central Presbyterian Church in New York, the work was then lost, and then reconstructed by Ives in 1923, partially from sketches he had preserved but largely from memory. (Ives had a prodigious memory, apparently, and could reconstruct works decades after they had been lost or abandoned.) Its first true public performance didn't take place until 1966,when the Gregg Smith Singers presented the official premiere. (The Robert Shaw Chorale then performed it the following year.)

This remarkable work is full of many Ives compositional touchstones, made famous in his later works, that belie its original date of composition. Written for chorus, organ and bells, it is in every sense a visionary work, full of unusual harmonies, stacked chords, harmonic ambiguities, and even tone clusters, and, as well, transcendent atmosphere (provided by the bells). Yet, despite this fearsome description of its constituents, the work is fresh and accessible, and, like the very best of Ives, very moving. In a phrase, it is an eleven-minute masterpiece, and easily the shining star of this album. And to think that it is the oldest work on the album, and by so many years!

Gloriae Dei Cantores do a splendid job with this difficult work, and this performance easily suffices as the best example of an Ives psalm in the absence of a remastering of the Gregg Smith Singers LPs that had so many good Ives choral works on them. Better yet, other albums by Gloriae Dei Cantores have additional Ives psalms on them.

As I finish writing these thoughts, we are less than 24 hours away from official observance of the 50th year since Ives's passing. A fitting tribute, I'd like to think.

Igor Stravinsky, late in life, and in an unusually rare moment of candor for him, conceded that Charles Ives had been "The Great Anticipator." Unfortunately for Ives, this bout of candor came eight years after he died. And, upon Arnold Schoenberg's death In 1953 (six months before Ives did), his widow came upon a remarkable statement by her husband, written nearly a decade earlier: [quote]

There is a great Man living in this Country-a composer.
He has solved the problem of how to preserve one's self-esteem.
He responds to negligence by contempt.
He is not forced to accept praise or blame.
His name is Ives. [unquote]

That these two composers, contemporaries of Ives, took so long to pay proper tribute is as much a result of Ives having chosen to be a "private" composer over the two important decades of his composing life (1902 - 1922) as it was their own agendas and efforts. Before 1922, nothing of significance that Ives had written saw public performance subsequent to his 1902 cantata, "The Celestial Country." And nothing of significance came from his pen after those two decades; he spent the balance of his life editing his works and supporting the efforts of other American composers.

However, beginning in the 1930s, Ives's works slowly began to see public performance, and the pace of performance did pick up in the years remaining to him. And what concert-goers, and fellow composers, began to hear was a bewildering variety of musics, at least some of which reminded them of works not only by Schoenberg and Stravinsky but by Debussy, Bartók, Scriabin, Copland and a host of other "moderns." And on his death in 1954, at which time Harmony Ives placed his works in public trust, with John Kirkpatrick as the executor, the floodgates began to open on what it was that Ives had accomplished, not least of which was to anticipate virtually every significant stylistic movement in 20th-century music.

With the 50th anniversary of Ives's death just days away (May 19, 2004) as I write this, we now have a much better picture of "Ives the anticipator." And, as well, "Ives the protean American extender of the classical tradition." And this book, edited by two of the most knowledgeable Ives scholars, is as fine an effort as I've seen at putting Ives in proper historical perspective. It is the benchmark for the comparative study of Ives's compositional aesthetic, and I don't expect that it will be soon surpassed in this respect.

The book is in two unequal parts (following an introduction by J. Peter Burkholder). The first third of the book, entitled "Predecessors," describes Ives's early musical education, by both his father and Horatio Parker. The three essays in this section cover his background in, and familiarity with, the music of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Franck, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky and Reger, as well as those who, like Parker, made up the preceding "New England School": George Chadwick, Frederick Shepherd Converse, Daniel Gregory Mason and John Knowles Paine. Sandwiched between the European and New England School essays is a superb one by Geoffrey Block (co-editor along with Burkholder) entitled "The 'Sounds That Beethoven Didn't Have'," showing how Ives both borrowed from and built upon Beethoven in writing his culminating keyboard masterpiece, the "Concord" Sonata. This essay cannot but help those who are befuddled by this thorny work.

The balance of the book is given over to comparisons of Ives with his European contemporaries. The first is a reprint of Robert P. Morgan's groundbreaking 1978 essay, "Ives and Mahler: Mutual Responses at the End of an Era." While this essay is available on the internet in Adobe pdf form, its inclusion here is most welcome and appropriate. There is so much commonality in the compositional aesthetics of these two (incorporation of "vernacular" music, use of polyrhythms, providing for "near" and "far" sound fields) that it is surprising that matters took as long as they did to reach this stage (although Elliott Carter, some years earlier, had pointed the way, seemingly the first to do so).

"Ives, Schoenberg, and the Musical Ideal" sets out not only the similarities between Ives's usage of the terms "manner and substance" and Schoenberg's of "style and idea" (and their commonality in philosophical thought traceable back to Kant), but also their shared admiration of Brahms. That Ives wrote atonally and experimented with tone rows in advance of Schoenberg is an interesting aside, but the "substance" (or "idea"), if you will, is that both developed new aesthetics of some similarity in expression and much commonality in background.

"Ives and Stravinsky: Two Angles on 'the German Stem'" is, for me, the most fascinating essay in the book. Ives wrote in bitonality some years before "Petroushka" and had been accused of "borrowing" ideas from "The Rite of Spring" well before the true facts emerged. But ultimately more interesting are the parallels between the two in terms of their musical educations and usage of source materials, and their inveterate editing of existing works. Of course, their motivations for doing so differed: While Ives was editing largely to achieve performance, Stravinsky was forever "scrubbing his works clean" of earlier influences.

When study began on Ives's manuscripts (now complete, thanks to James Sinclair's "A Descriptive Catalog of the Music of Charles Ives"), a treasure trove of "anticipations"-atonality, tone rows, bitonality, polyrhythms, collage, impressionism, minimalism, aleatorism and virtually every other "ism"-was found. While this book does not cover everything, the essays on Ives and Schoenberg and Ives and Stravinsky are worth the price of admission. But I do wish that the editors had included contributions on Ives and Debussy and Ives and Bartók (despite Burkholder's apology for not having done so in the Introduction). A very minor cavil for an otherwise remarkable collection of essays.

Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber-let's agree among friends to simply call him Biber for short-was an Austrian (by way of Moravia) contemporary of Bach, Handel, Telemann and Vivaldi. Alleged to be the greatest violinist of his time, he rose in rank to become court composer to the Salzburg Cathedral, and clearly represented the high point of the Austrian Baroque. His ceremonial music-especially his Missa Salisburgensis and Missa Bruxellensis-was perhaps the match, in sonic splendor, of Handel's famous Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music, but nonetheless distinctive enough that one would never confuse the two composers.

I must say that Biber is fast becoming a guilty pleasure of mine, and quite by accident. It was largely through the dropping of some "this is what I'm listening to" hints by a friend of mine that I thought I'd give him a try, starting first with the two masses noted above. These masses do require some more of my listening time before I feel comfortable in commenting on them. But I have no such problem with this remarkable collection of his 1681 Violin Sonatas.

I suppose I should have started with his more famous "Mystery" or "Rosary" Sonatas, but I must say that I am so taken in by the performance by Andrew Manze and his HIP (historically-informed performance) Romanesca group (with Nigel North on lute and therebo and John Toll on harpsichord and organ) in these 1681 Sonatas that I think I'll simply wait until Manze and Romanseca have their own release of the Mystery Sonatas. Yes, this double-CD recording is that good!

Biber's sonata style would never be confused with Bach's for this instrument (his famous Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin being the obvious example), largely due to the latter's much more highly developed contrapuntal style (and the voice leading that can be the benefit of well-written counterpoint). Biber's style is altogether much freer in form, almost (well, perhaps actually) improvisatory by comparison. An obvious advantage-one that speaks to what must have been prodigious playing abilities by Biber-is that these works are thrilling; utter flights of fancy as compared to his more cerebral counterpart from Leipzig. The "free form," as it were, with its near-absence of conventional voice-leading, provides "a surprise at every turn." And there are many of them throughout the eight numbered sonatas and three additional works.

One might say, with justification, that Biber was the Paganini of his day (style differences of Baroque vs. Romantic notwithstanding). Moreover, Biber was an early exponent of a trick that Paganini used a century and a half later: "scordatura" or retuning of the instrument for special tone-color effects due to emphasizing different harmonic overtones in the retuning. To say that scordatura results in some phenomenal violinistic effects would be an understatement.

Andrew Manze and his partners play these works to the hilt, with sheer brilliance in both tone and technique, the latter simply staggering in many spots. Those of you who might think that a true Baroque violin is an acoustically "dead" or dull instrument in comparison to a modern instrument are in for quite a surprise if you've never heard Manze perform. Put simply, these two CDs have well over two hours of some of the finest fiddling I've ever heard. (And yes, "fiddling" is not all that far off the mark, given the free improvisation and high degree of ornamentation that was typical of Biber.)

Cerebral vs. passionate? A fair comparison between Bach and Biber. I'll always have my days when only the Partitas and Sonatas for Solo Violin will fill the bill; the days when I want my mind to be fully engaged in the music. And, now, with this Biber discovery, I'll also have my days when I want something quite different; something quite extraordinary in a different way than Bach provides. Let's agree to call them "days when I want the violinist to wail!" And Andrew Manze is the violinist to do it. Now, about those Mystery Sonatas...

A final note: Not all that long ago, these two CDs were a full-priced Harmonia Mundi item. Now rather recently released in Harmonia Mundi's "1 + 1" budget line, but with no cost-cutting whatsoever on production values (full booklet included), this Biber album is a bargain.

My main interest in acquiring this CD (as well as a companion one on the same Symposium label called, simply, "Ionisation" and including the famed Edgar Varèse work) was to assess the capabilities of Nicolas Slonimsky as a conductor of the music of "moderns," and, most importantly among those moderns, the music of Charles Ives.

Save for an earlier public performance of portions of Ives's Fourth Symphony by Eugene Goossens in the '20s (and, perhaps, in-practice run-throughs of his Second Symphony by Walter Damrosch and his New York Symphony-Orchestra a decade earlier than the documented Goossens performance), the first conductor to champion the orchestral music of Ives was Slonimsky. In the early '30s, Slonimsky formed a group of Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians (and, I would expect, some free-lancers) as the Boston Chamber Orchestra, and, with this group, directed some of the earliest-known performances of the music of Chávez, Cowell, Ives, Riegger, Ruggles, Varèse and other lesser-known Pan-American composers. His performances of this music, most especially Ives's "Three Places in New England," in venues as far apart as Havana, New York, Paris and Berlin, were the stuff of legends. And no one added more to that legend than Slonimsky himself, in his later writings as diarist and musical lexicographer. Famed for his preternatural ability to conduct two different meters with his arms, he seemed a natural for conducting the polyrhythms of much of Ives's music.

It is therefore sad for me to have to say that the two early Ives performances, recorded in May, 1934, captured on this CD border on the abysmal. The "Barn Dance" (from Ives's Holidays Symphony) has serious intonation and ensemble roughness to it, perhaps as a consequence of the Pan American Chamber Orchestra being essentially a pick-up group not having a tradition of performing such rhythmically difficult works. (It was only over time-measured in decades-that performance practices for Ives's technically difficult works were elevated to an acceptable level.) The performance of "In the Night" (from Ives's Set for Theatre Orchestra) fares somewhat better, if hardly at the level of what such current-day Ives specialists as Richard Bernas and James Sinclair routinely achieve these days.

These two early (and brief) Ives performances are included amongst what the Symposium label producer (unattributed) describes as "Pioneer Orchestral Recordings: 1927 - 1951." The dawn of the age of electrical recordings began in 1925, and the earliest recording on this CD dates to 1928 (not 1927), a rather good performance by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra led by Prof. Anton Konrath (a total unknown to me) of the Scherzo from Bruckner's 3rd Symphony. Equally good in performance, and marginally better in sound, are yet three more Bruckner Scherzos, from his Symphonies "0," 1 and 2, with the Berlin Staatsoper Orchestra led by Fritz Zaun (another total unknown).

The CD opens with an extended suite from Albert Roussel's "Le Festin de l'Araignée" ("The Spider's Feast), dating from 1929 and led by the composer. Neither the recorded sound nor the orchestral performance is up to the par of the above-noted earlier Bruckner recording. Interesting as an historical document, but little more.

More interesting, primarily for their rarity, are early recordings of little-heard music by Mark Lothar (two excerpts from "Lord Spleen," with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra directed by Clemens Schmalstich and dating from 1930) and Werner Egk, remembered as the composer of the ballet music for "The Red Shoes" (his "Kleine Abraxas-Suite," with the RIAS Symphony Orchestra, Berlin directed by Ferenc Fricsay and dating from 1951).

The well-filled (74:47) CD also has a 1945 performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams's "Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis," with Arturo Toscanini leading his NBC Orchestra in a live performance (complete with audience cough). Undoubtedly recorded in the infamous RCA Studio 8H, the recording of this performance captures all the problems attributed to the venue. Worse yet, Toscanini's interpretation of the work is best described as "rushed, driven, forced, totally unidiomatic," and not all that good from an ensemble perspective either. (The cello pizzicati early in the work are both way too prominent and not at all "together.") Without specifically editorializing on Toscanini interpretations and performances in general, I'll simply note that this is perhaps the worst possible way in which to acquaint oneself with this Vaughan Williams masterpiece.

The CD transfers seem to have been made totally without benefit of any of the well-known technical tricks available for reducing surface noise from the originals (presumably lacquer masters), and this is largely independent of vintage: the later (1945, 1951) recordings don't necessarily show measurable improvement over the earlier ones (1928, 1929) made at the dawn of the electrical recording age. The booklet notes are helpful for background material on the more obscure composers (Egk and Lothar), but little else. In particular, the producer/engineer responsible for the transfers is not identified (and it's probably just as well).

In summary, a mixed-bag curiosity, primarily of interest to those who would like to get some sense of Slonimsky's vaunted expertise with the music of Ives. Regrettably, these Pan American Chamber Orchestra recordings-perhaps the only Slonimsky ones extant-do a disservice to both composer and conductor. If only there existed an air check of the performance Slonimsky led of Ives's "Three Places in New England," conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in March, 1932! Those performances also included Ruggles's "The Sun-treader," Cowell's "Synchrony" and Varèse's "Arcana." To hear (or, more correctly, read) Slonimsky's relating of the concerts, they must have been something special.

Well, maybe one of these days...

Mark Helprin once offered this advice to an aspiring writer on how best to construct a work, to grab the attention of the reader (and here I can only paraphrase, as I have misplaced the source document): "Treat your story as if a stone thrown into a still pool, coming to rest at the bottom. Then dive in after it." The paraphrase is accurate enough for my purposes, and the message is clear: Know well the end of your journey before you begin it.

Little did I know then, when I had meandered across Helprin's advice, that it would be central to my ability to write my thoughts on "A Soldier of the Great War." For about the same length of time as that advice had been imprinted somewhere in my brain, I had also been faced with the daunting prospect of commenting on a thrice-read book, now bulging with scores of page markers as reminders to me of phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and even full pages, all worthy of comment. And, it seemed, the longer I put this task off, the more daunting it became.

Fortunately, this block was broken in the recent past, when I needed to give careful thought to a birthday gift for a friend. The gift couldn't appear to be too lavish, except in the riches of its contents. It needed to be something that would be new to this friend (and here I was at some risk), and at the same time something that would not soon - if ever - be forgotten. In the end, I decided to chance it with "A Soldier of the Great War," enclosing a brief note regarding what was in store. And the working through of that note was the curative that I needed for providing my comments on this Helprin work. So I threw my own stone into the pool and dove in after it.

"A Soldier of the Great War" flows over with great themes, the long arc of which is the relating of its protagonist's - Alessandro Giuliani's - life story, told in retrospect from Alessandro's memories of that life to a youth who accompanies him on a seemingly short journey from Rome to a near-distant village. And, following his own advice regarding the stone thrown in the pool, Helprin's lyrical, singing prose begins with the story's first paragraph, drawing the reader, too, to dive in, and doesn't let up until the very last page (where it then lingers for a very long while).

The overarching themes are classic: love and war; of love discovered, then lost, then found once again; of the blunt impersonality and the lunacy of war. They - and others - are all juxtaposed with typical Helpernian brilliance. There are maniacally funny set-pieces, interwoven so seamlessly into the narrative that one is not aware at first of Helprin's skill with the set-piece device as one is drawn in. (These include an excursion to the plains of Eastern Hungary that is one of the most remarkable of such pieces ever written.) There are passages of heartrending grief quite beyond one's ability to deal with them. And the story teems with characters both bigger than life and smaller and meaner than dirt.

But, at its core, "A Soldier of the Great War" is a story about love and beauty and the permutations one can make of those two words. And it is for this reason that I chose it. If you're like me, it will take you forever and a day to read it, as you find yourself re-reading - often several times, and on occasion out-loud just to hear what Helprin's words sound like - passage after passage after soaring passage.

This book is, also, everything that has already been written about it. Like Helprin's other major works, it has autobiographical content of both experience and opinion interspersed throughout. (One need not be aware of this before the fact; it is inessential to the story.) The story is indeed a classic Bildungsroman - a "novel of formation" that traces Alessandro Giuliani's growth in spirit over his life - and one of the very best of its genre. There is a certain convenience that, at least alphabetically, Helprin fits comfortably between Heller and Hemingway. But use this convenience wisely, as when browsing under "Helprin" in a bookstore: This story is every bit the equal of "Catch 22" in its often manic depiction of the lunacy of war, but is far more lyrical; a love song where Heller's work clearly is not. And, if "A Farewell to Arms" captured the Great War from Hemingway's uniquely American perspective, Helprin, by opting for an Italian protagonist, finds a universality that eludes Hemingway, and with prose that a century hence will continue to sing, unlike Hemingway's, which already seems stilted by comparison.

Finally, I am unsure as to whether I envy those who, like my friend, are experiencing this work for the first time (but I think that I do). Newcomers likely will be torn between lingering on each page and turning to the next, as the story races to its astonishing, yet in hindsight, perfectly-crafted and satisfying end: Helprin's stone indeed has landed in the deepest part of his pool. For re-readers like me, it matters not that one knows in advance how the story ends; there is a distinct pleasure to be derived from a lingering journey that is its own reward.

So, at long last, and not without solemnity, I can carefully remove those scores of page markers, needing them no longer. And thus I begin my fourth traversal of this work, this time with a sixth sense that a guiding force will keep my friend and me on the same page. While there are factors which make it an uncertain thing that we will read these pages aloud, perhaps in my meanderings I will find evidence elsewhere that this gift, like Helprin's stone, has come to rest at the right place.

...and something quite a bit different.

While concert halls often have pipe organs installed (making it possible to perform, for example, the Saint-Saëns Third Symphony, or the Second and Eighth Symphonies of Mahler), not all do, and, of those that do, more than a few are sub-standard. If one were to assume that some concert hall managements don't take their pipe organ installations seriously, one would be correct.

Fortunately, the powers that be who administer and manage Chicago's Orchestra Hall thought differently a few years back, and underwrote the installation of a new pipe organ specifically designed and built for the hall and its acoustics by Casavant Frères. While hardly the largest of its type, at "only" three manuals, forty-four stops and sixty ranks, it suffers not a whit from a lack of sheer acoustical power output or flexibility of voicing, it can easily overpower a full symphony orchestra if need be, and it is very thoughtfully designed and built to absolutely minimize - in fact eliminate - extraneous noise from its blower system, thanks to a rather radical "high wind pressure" system largely responsible for the organ's acoustical power capabilities.

This new Cedille release is the debut appearance of this Chicago Orchestra Hall organ on CD. And it is a stunning release, designed to show off the organ's capabilities in a nicely unusual set of works for organ and orchestra, covering a half century of compositions by American composers.

The first three works, by Barber, Piston and Sowerby, all date from mid-20th century (give or take a decade), and largely reflect the "American school" (both neoromanticism and neoclassicism) of the period.

Samuel Barber's "Toccata Festiva" was originally written as a dedication piece for a new organ installation in Philadelphia's Academy of Music in 1960, and received its premiere that year under the direction of Eugene Ormandy. Written in Barber's best neoromantic style, it is a fitting piece for such a dedication, full of large gestures and brilliant writing for both organ and orchestra. Here, this opening track serves well for "dedicating" the new Casavant Frères organ.

Walter Piston's "Prelude and Allegro for Organ and Strings" (1943) is in his thoroughly accessible neoclassical style. The Prelude is a gentle threnody, mainly for the strings but with nice underpinnings by the organ. The Allegro is full of characteristic Piston contrapuntal devices, with nice "call and response" writing for the organ and the strings. While hardly "astringent" (except perhaps by comparison to the works that precede and follow it), this brief Piston work serves as an excellent "palate cleanser" for the Sowerby work.

Leo Sowerby (1895 - 1968) was a very prolific composer, with well over 500 works attributed to him, 50 of them for organ alone or with orchestra. This latter fact most surely makes him the most prolific American composer for the instrument, on a par with such French romantics as Dupré, Vierne, Widor and the Belgian Jongen, all them his contemporaries. Essentially a neoromantic in the mold of Barber (or, perhaps better yet, Howard Hanson), his concert music (as opposed to his liturgical music) is seldom heard in concert halls these days. This is unfortunate, because the work offered up here - "Concertpiece for Organ and Orchestra" (1951) - is every bit as good as those of the 20th century French school. It is very much a virtuoso showpiece for the organist, of a nature that I can imagine the likes of Virgil Fox championing it. Unfortunately, I know of no other recording - by Fox or any other organist - of this Sowerby masterpiece. Fortunately, it doesn't matter, because this performance is simply splendid.

The concluding work by Michael Colgrass is indeed "something quite a bit different:" Written in 1990, it is an absolutely stunning work. A "coloristic soundscape" in five parts depicting the Arctic Inuit and their lives and legends (in which the Snow Walker is the image of death and resurrection), the work - if you'll excuse the expression - pulls out all the stops, both for the soloist and for the orchestra. Some of the "environmental" effects are simply marvelous, such as Colgrass's writing for the French horn to create a wolf's howl. Throughout, Colgrass treats the organ as "just another instrument of the orchestra" with its own set of capabilities and timbres; while it is "front and center" in the piece, this is no conventional concerted work. And, while "modern" in every respect, "Snow Walker" is hardly inaccessible. Atmospheric and, in spots, mildly dissonant: yes; inaccessible: no. Quite enjoyable, in fact.

In all four works, David Schrader, the organist, acquits himself splendidly; he is clearly a highly skilled instrumentalist. And Chicago's "second orchestra," the Grant Park Orchestra, directed by Carlos Kalmar, is equally accomplished. The sound throughout is state-of-the-art.

This is truly an auspicious debut album for this instrument, as well as another terrific Cedille release of seldom-heard music in absolutely stunning sound. Cedille Records is the brainchild of James S. Ginsberg (son of the Supreme Court justice). The label would appear to specialize in audiophile-quality recordings of music "on the Chicago scene" (although this "thumbnail" description is probably too limiting). This release fits that description to a "T". I (for one) am looking forward to other works for organ and orchestra, employing this splendid new organ in one of America's finest concert halls. And the two works by Sowerby and Colgrass have certainly piqued my interest where these two all-too-seldomly programmed composers are concerned. I've already got a Sowerby organ music CD, as well as some different (and probably unusual) Colgrass music, queued up for near-future listening.

...and make it my first review of the new year.

This superb Naxos CD of the four Violin Sonatas by Charles Ives might well have been reviewed months ago by me, had it not been for one small matter. Every time I'd set out to listen to the CD, I'd get as far as the Largo cantabile (2nd) movement of the 1st Violin Sonata, only to stop and play it again. And again.

Then, a few times, I actually got as far as the 3rd movement of this work, only to hear the strains of "Watchman, Tell Us of the Night," the Lowell Mason hymn, little known these days but used to such superb effect by Ives, years later, in the opening "Prelude: Maestoso" movement of his culminating masterpiece, the 4th Symphony. There I was, stuck with the same problem: Couldn't go further; simply had to listen again. And again.

Needless to say, I finally managed to solve the problem. But it took both a conscious effort to listen to the sonatas in reverse order AND a New Year's resolution as well.

There is little that I can add to the two excellent previous reviews. Scott Morrison and Robin Friedman pretty much touched all the bases: Ives's use of "cumulative form" (a developmental "working toward a summing up" of each movement, by introducing thematic fragments which, only by the end of the movement, come together to present the full theme), his inveterate borrowing of vernacular and hymnic materials, and the total parity between the two instrumentalists. (Probably never before, and never since, have such sonatas been written where the piano part is so equally matched, both thematically and technically, to the violin part. Calling these works "violin sonatas" does an injustice to the violinist's equal partner!)

Ives was not, himself, a violinist, although his father, George Edward Ives, had been a pretty good fiddler, and I'm sure that there's more than a fair bit of sentimental tribute by Charlie to George in these works. What Ives certainly did, in these sonatas, was to "introduce a distinctly American style of violin playing [...], namely paraphrases of fiddle music" and [he] "associated the violin with spiritual exaltation and with hymn singing." (These quotations are the words of Nancy Mandel, violinist and wife and co-collaborator with Alan Mandel in performing Ives's chamber works, written nearly three decades ago for an Ives centennial symposium, "On Performing the Violin Sonatas." They're certainly better than any words I could think up for this review occasion.)

Every bit of this stylistic description by Nancy Mandel comes through in these works: Scattered throughout the total of twelve movements spread over the four sonatas, one will in fact hear idiomatic fiddling - including ragtime and country and barn dances - and spiritually exalted hymnic phrasing. And, though the four works cover more than a decade of Ives's composing career, there is not an expected sense that the later works are in any way more complex than the earlier ones; almost the exact opposite occurs, in which the later two sonatas are considerably more accessible than the two earlier ones: Ives, in his "Memos," describes the latter two works as "...a kind of slump backward."

While I'm not necessarily buying into Ives's self-criticism, his observation perhaps in part explains why it is that the 1st Sonata grabs me in the gut the way that it does. The work looks back to the classical tradition, with its Lisztian piano writing in the Largo cantabile movement, at the same time that it looks forward in this movement, with some eerily gorgeous violin double-stop writing that sounds to these ears as if Ives is writing in true quarter tones. This Largo cantabile movement is simply magic. And then comes the cumulative-form thematic development toward "Watchman..." in the concluding movement: spiritual exaltation indeed! Is it any wonder that I had difficulty moving past this sonata, and on to the others?

Like Scott Morrison, I remember the much earlier Rafael Druian/John Simms LPs. Unfortunately, unlike Scott, I just barely remember them. And I'm unfamiliar with the Gregory Fulkerson/Robert Shannon CDs. So, at the same time that I am rediscovering (and loving) the sonatas, I am hearing Curt Thompson and Rodney Waters for the first time.

These young instrumentalists are simply superb. Thompson gets into the dance-like episodes with true "fiddling" style, and simply soars in the hymnic passages. Waters handles the very difficult piano part with aplomb, and is every bit the equal partner to Thompson (as he needs to be, given how Ives wrote the virtuosic piano parts). I may or may not be missing anything by not having either the Druian/Simms LPs or the Fulkerson/Shannon CDs. But Naxos - once again, as it has demonstrated in the past with its Ives contributions to its "American Classics" series - need not apologize to anyone for these performances. Moreover, unlike Fulkerson/Shannon on the full-price Bridge label, where the sonatas are spread too generously over two CDs, here they fit without a problem onto a single budget CD.

I have a collection of scores in my library, admittedly small and mostly orchestral, covering those works near and dear to me. My SECOND resolution of the New Year is to track down the score for at least the 1st Violin Sonata (if only to see how Ives wrote the violin part for the Largo cantabile movement, particularly for the quarter-tone double stops), and preferably the scores for all four. This is not only "canonical Ives"; these sonatas are among the finest 20th century works in the genre.

And, looking back over all of 2003, I think that the single classical work that received the most playing time by me was this Ives 1st Violin Sonata. What a supremely sublime piece of music it is! It's strange to find myself using this as an "excuse" for such a long delay in writing this review. But there you have it.

Some time back - now rapidly approaching the two-year mark - I attended an Australian Chamber Orchestra concert while they were on tour in the U.S. The printed program was a combination of somewhat standard fare by Mozart and Bartok combined with offbeat works by Haydn and Sculthorpe. Their ability to absorb and idiomatically recreate such a wide range of styles was, to put it mildly, staggering. It was a rousing success for this Tognetti Troupe, so much so that they were called back for multiple encores.

The final encore was Tognetti's arrangement of Astor Piazzolla's "Oblivion" for string orchestra (sans bandoneon), and it was a sublime ending to an outstanding concert. In that performance, it was clear to me that the unique Piazzolla style had survived the journey from Argentina to Australia, and that, moreover, Tognetti had succeeded in capturing the Piazzolla spirit in his string orchestra arrangement of "Oblivion", made even more insinuatingly sinuous (if that were possible) by "implying" the missing bandoneon part. (In point of fact, Piazzolla's music exhibits a great deal of resiliency to arrangement for instrumental forces other than what he wrote for, as can be witnessed in the various successes of Daniel Barenboim, Gidon Kremer, the Kronos Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma, and even the Montreal Symphony Orchestra led by Charles Dutoit.)

Given the idiomatic panache with which the Tognetti Troupe performed "Oblivion," as well as a personal preference for string orchestral arrangements, I had high hopes that a Piazzolla CD by this group would be forthcoming. When, about a year ago, an Australian cyberfriend informed me that the group had scheduled a series of concerts of Piazzolla's music, my hopes brightened considerably. And now that album is here. (N.B.: It wasn't easy to find this product page despite its being here for some two months already; various "power search" tricks failed. Finally, almost in a fit of desperation, I succeeded in "fudging" this page from its UK equivalent by monkeying with the URL.)

This is a well-filled album (at a total timing of 74:31), and it is everything I could have hoped for, and then some. This is as good a cross-section of Piazzolla's music that can be made to fit on a CD, including several of his most famous works covering the full gamut of his style, from wildly energetic to passionately languorous.

James Crabb - the guest soloist (and arranger of several of the album's works) - is nothing short of incredible. Performing on classical accordion - like the bandoneon, a "button" accordion, but with a far different and much more complex arrangement of "keys" - Crabb seemingly has no difficulty in adapting this instrument to perform music that fell naturally to Piazzolla's own hands but must be at a higher level of difficulty for his chosen instrument. Nevertheless, he does it all, and the effect is as if Piazzolla himself was there.

While I've heard most of this music before, either by Piazzolla and his own group or by one or more of the groups noted at the outset, works new to me are "Vayamos al Diablo," not quite a tango with its strange 7/4 beat, and "Tanguedia," a dark piece suggestive (as the booklet notes point out) of a dangerous Buenos Aires at night, as it "deconstructs" totally while it proceeds to its eerie conclusion.

But I am a sucker for passionately languorous Piazzolla, and it is in such pieces as "Oblivion" and "Milonga del Angel" that I think Tognetti and Crabb do their best work as arrangers and performers. The string chamber orchestra seems ideal as an instrumental setting for these, especially with the way the arrangements incorporate both piano and harp (particularly the latter, which adds a marvelous touch). Tognetti's solo turns on violin exhibit a sweetness of tone and a performing style as well that - when combined with the full strings plus harp - can literally take one's breath away. This is magic that lingers.

Maestro Tognetti has an incredibly natural feel for this music, and his ability to imbue his ensemble with "the feel" is remarkable. These Aussies, to a person, play Piazzolla as if they were "to the manner born." And it's downright nice of Tognetti to arrange the tracks so that "Oblivion" is the stunning closer: a wonderful keepsake of that evening, nearly two years ago, when the languorous strains of "Oblivion" wafted out from the stage to enthrall me and leave me both dizzy and hungry for more.

This album is, without question, the "Piazzolla album of the year" and among the finest chamber orchestra albums it's been my pleasure to enjoy. Should Maestro Tognetti bring his troupe to the U.S. again this year, showcasing the music on this album, I'll be there!

Two hundred years ago, barely a week ago, Louis-Hector Berlioz was born. This, then, is a time for me to comment on a few of my favorite performances of his works, some of them "favorites by acclamation" and others simply those in which I find special merit, enough so that they are frequently in my CD players. This is also the time of Advent on the Christian calendar, and so it is doubly appropriate that L'Enfance du Christ, one of Berlioz's most enduring works - in fact, his biggest success during his lifetime in terms of performances led by him - should find its way into my playing queue at this time of year.

L'Enfance du Christ, while not nearly as dramatic as Berlioz's other works that could be said to fall into the genres of oratorio or cantata, is nonetheless "unquestionably Berlioz"; no one familiar with his style would confuse the work for that of another composer. An oratorio setting of the Nativity and cast in three parts (a "Sacred Trilogy" as described by him), it is his gentlest extended work by far, and it provides an ever-fresh alternative to the usual holiday music offered at this time of year.

Notwithstanding the work's "kinder, gentler" aspects, L'Enfance du Christ has all of the stylistic characteristics that serve to set aside Berlioz from his contemporaries (and successors): often-surprising melodic and harmonic shifts, quicksilver-fleet rhythmic figures, and a clarity of detail that set him up as the master orchestrator that he was. Faithfully capturing this "essence of Berlioz" - particularly the delicacy and purity of the work - then becomes a matter of a conductor (and his forces) being imbued with "the Berlioz gene" for lack of a better expression.

My familiarity with L'Enfance du Christ goes back some four decades, to the 1961 L'Oiseau-Lyre LP boxed set of Colin Davis (many, many years before he was knighted), with an all-star cast led by Peter Pears and with splendid notes provided by the Berlioz expert David Cairns. This was once available as a "Decca Double" CD transfer, but is seemingly no longer available; it is a classic. And, while Davis has since rerecorded the work (for Philips), it is John Eliot Gardiner's approach to the work - in this recording under review - that presently suits me best.

While this 1988 performance predates Gardiner's establishment of the "authentic instruments" Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique that he was later to use for his successful series of Berlioz recordings on the Philips label, his leading of the Orchestre de l'Opera de Lyon has many of his now-well-known stylistic touches to the music of Berlioz: generally brisk, lithe tempi with a clear rendering of Berlioz's unique rhythmic figurations, and a wealth of clarity of detail, even delicacy, that is totally fitting to the Berlioz style.

Gardiner further has the benefit of splendid soloists for the main roles in the oratorio: Anne Sofie von Otter (seemingly "the all-purpose mezzo of our time") as Mary, Gilles Cachemaille as Joseph, Jose van Dam as Herod, and Anthony Rolfe-Johnson as The Narrator. All of these soloists, save perhaps von Otter, are well-known Berlioz specialists; von Otter is simply in a class by herself in her versatility, here providing a Mary of purity and simplicity. The Monteverdi Choir (a group that Gardiner WAS to use time and again for his later Philips recordings of Berlioz works) provides the perfect choral backdrop to the soloists and orchestra.

Here, then, is what is for me the best currently-available recording of L'Enfance du Christ, one that truly captures every aspect of both the work (and its gentleness and delicacy) and the spirit and style of the idiosyncratic and unique genius who was Berlioz. Never mind that Berlioz couldn't quite come to terms with his religion, "the Catholic and Apostolic Church of Rome..." of his upbringing, when an adult; his tribute to the Nativity is as heartfelt as any.

I am thankful (and I hope that others sympathetic to my comments will be as well) that this recording, originally on the full-price Erato label, has been rereleased as an inexpensive Warner (Elektra/Asylum/Teldec/Erato) "Ultima" twofer in attractive packaging (including a "slimline" jewel box). The sound is just fine, despite the recording venue being the Church of Sainte-Madeleine, Pérouges (a venue where the opportunity for overreverberant acoustics can always raise its head, but doesn't here). I can only find fault with the "foldout" containing the overly brief notes about L'Enfance du Christ (and none at all regarding Gardiner's fresh approach to the work). But this is a minor point indeed.

Bon anniversaire, M. Berlioz!