Malmö Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, James Sinclair
- +The General Slocum; Overture in g-moll; Yale-Princeton Football Game; Postlude in F
When asked to define a masterpiece in music Stravinsky chose Ives’s Decoration Day, a tone poem that Ives later made the second movement of his Holidays Symphony (its first movement, ‘Washington’s Birthday’, is available on Naxos 8559087).
The remaining movements also celebrate key American holidays with characteristic verve.
The General Slocum movingly commemorates a 1904 boating disaster in which more than a thousand people lost their lives.
The Overture and Postlude are early works that nonetheless display Ives’s originality, while Yale- Princeton Football Game exuberantly depicts a legendary 1897 match.
19th November 2009
The sheer churning power and range of [Ives's] musical voice constantly takes the breath away...The performances by James Sinclair and the Malmö orchestra are powerfully wrought; at budget price, it's irresistible.