Before normal concert life ground to a halt in March, one of Gustavo Dudamel’s last projects with the Los Angeles Philharmonic was a cycle of Charles Ives’s symphonies, which Dudamel paired with works by Dvořák. It’s those outstanding Ives performances from LA’s Walt Disney Hall in February, immaculately recorded, that are brought together in this (so far) download-only release.
By “complete” symphonies, Deutsche Grammophon means the four numbered works. The set does not include the New England Holiday Symphony, the collection of four pieces named after US public holidays that Ives admitted had no musical connections between them, and which could be played in concert as separate orchestral works, or the tantalising Universe Symphony, planned in 1915 as a contemplation of the mysteries of creation and to be scored for a huge orchestra, which he left as a pile of sketches.
Perhaps Dudamel will eventually record both those works, too, for these performances certainly demonstrate that he is a very fine Ives interpreter, unerringly charting the journey from the almost blameless late Romanticism of the First Symphony to the modernist complexity of the Fourth. It was a smart decision for the LA Philharmonic to include Dvořák alongside the Ives symphonies, for the Czech composer, much more than Brahms, seems to lurk behind Ives’s First, which was composed as his graduation exercise from Yale; its second movement even seems to begin with a brief reference to the slow movement of the New World Symphony, though the music’s tendency to modulate at the slightest provocation does hint at the later iconoclastic composer.
But if the First Symphony was a farewell to the European tradition (Wagner as well as Dvořák), then the Second is positively overflowing with references to American music, whether hymns, patriotic songs or vaudeville numbers. Dudamel and his orchestra expertly tease out the contrapuntal tangles into which Ives weaves those fragmentary references just as surely as they guide the more explicitly quotation-laden Third, The Camp Meeting, towards its rapturous, almost sacramental conclusion.
But in any cycle of these symphonies, it’s the Fourth that presents the greatest performing challenges and the greatest musical rewards. Dudamel’s performance, with Marta Gardolińska as the second conductor and the Los Angeles Master Chorale supplying the off-stage choir, magnificently encapsulates this extraordinary work’s complexity and transcendental ambition, with every detail – blurs of quarter-tones, patchworks of quotes, and moments of jaw-dropping immensity – brought into sharp focus. It’s a glorious achievement.
