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CHARLES IVES
Tzimon Barto, piano
From weird and idiosyncratic, slightly crazy up to absolute genius – the assessment of the composer Charles Ives is today at least just as diversified as that of his main work for piano, the Concord Sonata. The four movements are based on four American writers of the 19th century who were all closely connected to the little town of Concord in Massachusetts, forming a centre of so-called Transcendentalism there. In the music, Ives does not draw musical portraits of the writers, who would hardly have inspired him to this extent in terms of their biographies. He rather allows himself to be guided by the moods that came to his mind roughly 50 years later in associations with their texts and the philosophy they advocated. Beside the difficult technical terms (complete dispensal with bar lines for long passages, also the use of clusters etc.) Tzimon Barto’s interpretation is full of his well known sensitivity and shows us a new impressive access to this bombastic work of 20th century piano literature.
