Charles Ives

Piano Sonata No 2, ‘Concord, Mass., 1840-1860’
Sonata for Violin and Piano No 4, ‘Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting’
Joonas Ahonen p, Pekka Kuusisto v
BIS BIS2249

Despite much of the compositional output of American modernist Charles Ives (1874-1954) remaining unperformed until after his death, he is now well-established as a significant and pioneering composer whose works “continue to find new friends and vigorous champions worldwide.” So observes Geoffrey Block in his excellent liner notes. His Concord Sonata, for piano with optional viola and flute (in first and last movements) is a complex programmatic work centred on the lives of four significant figures in the transcendentalism movement of mid-19th-century Concord, Massachusetts:...