May I second Mr Barrett's thanks?
Thanks.


Ah. I was thinking of a story that I've been told about how a visitor to Stockhausen's study during the composition of Gruppen saw an article by Brant open at his desk. In the light of Stockhausen's subsequent claims I always thought it would be understandable that Brant might be a little peeved. He's obviously A Bigger Man Than That.

Just been listening to the Emerson Concerto, or as Ives would have called it, Emerson Overture. From his projected series of orchestral pieces entitled Men of Literature, the only one that was (more or less) completed was the Robert Browning Overture. This one existed as a "developed draft" and was was reconstructed by David Porter in 1998 (and performed in a Prom in 1999?).

It would be interesting to compare this with the Brant orchestration, although in this Concerto, there's quite a bit that doesn't appear in the Concord Sonata. It sounds pretty plausible and I had a good time, but did feel that it was a tad well-behaved in comparison to what the composer's solution may have offered: more stuff going on and more of a sense of swirling struggle?

Here are some excerpts on youtube - unfortunately mostly solo piano moments. With a different pianist (the recorded version has Alan Feinberg + the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland Conducted by James Sinclair).

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JKzf4CQP3cM&feature=related

Sad news - the last of the American pioneers.

Yes, but I've not investigated his stuff for a long time. I suspect there's a lot of interesting piano music. I have an excellent LP of William Masselos playing Paeans, Granites and Stars (all from the 1920s) - craggy, dissonant (but not all the time) and expressive. I have other recordings which feature far less good performances (eg., by Michael Sellers).

I listened to Henry Brant's orchestration of the Concord sonata and found it very more interesting than did either of my respected colleagues members Bryn + Pim Derks. Brant has made little or no attempt to make it sound as though Ives had orchestrated it - it's an interpretation rather than a translation and so potentially offers new information about the work, for me at least. So (for instance) there's nothing in Hawthorne that is reminiscent of the 4th symphony, at least in the way that Ives presents it. In some ways it's a fairly legit orchestration with rather more strings than Ives would have used. Some things are reminiscent of Brant's own pieces, eg., a frequent use of timpani to bump up bass motifs: actually that's something he may have picked up from Ives anyway (In the Night etc), but I can only remember one place - towards the end of Thoreau - where one feels that Charlie would have done something similar.

It was particularly interesting to compare Brant's version of The Alcotts to that by Jonathan Elkus for wind band. Unsurprisingly the latter is all clarity with, of course, no strings: very competently done but with a few touches that I'm not too keen on, mainly to do with the added percussion (I don't reckon the added tubular bells, snare drum and cymbals are particularly desirable). Brant also begins with wind but scores very differently (a preponderence of double-reeds) than Elkus. Overall it's much more imaginative and therefore preferable to my ears, even though some seemingly important ties get left out in the middle and there are a couple of irksome chords with obvious misprints in the parts. Brant adds lines (eg., a big horn line at the climax) which seem welcome rather than indulgent. Overall, much more impressed than I expected to be.