Concert series to celebrate the music of Charles Ives

Kia-Hui Tan

Tonight, Sept. 16, violinist Kia-Hui Tan will kick off an informal festival of five concerts scheduled this fall by the Department of Music to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of American composer Charles Ives (1874-1954). The concert, scheduled for 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall, also will feature Cornell's Augustus Arnone and Xak Bjerken on piano. The concert is free and open to the public.

Tan will present two of Ives' sonatas for violin and piano: No. 3, assisted by Arnone, and No. 4 (also known as "Children's Day at the Camp Meeting"), with Bjerken. Two other living American composers will be represented on her program, as well: John Corigliano's "The Red Violin Caprices" and "Lines from Poetry" by Ronald Caltabiano, both scored for solo violin. Caltabiano has taken lines from the works of nine poets, including Robert Browning, Walt Whitman, e.e. cummings and W.H. Auden, and set them to music.

Born in Danbury, Conn., Ives pursued what is perhaps one of the most extraordinary and paradoxical careers in American music history. A businessman by day and composer by night, Ives' vast output has gradually brought him recognition as the most original and significant American composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He sought a highly personalized musical expression through the most innovative and radical technical means possible, and a fascination with bi-tonal forms, polyrhythms and quotation was nurtured by Ives' father, who was the primary creative influence on his musical style. Ironically, much of Ives' work would not be heard until his virtual retirement from music and business in 1930 due to severe health problems. Conductor Nicolas Slonimsky, music critic Henry Bellamann, pianist John Kirkpatrick (who performed the Concord Sonata at its triumphant premiere in New York in 1939 and was a Department of Music faculty member in the 1960s) and composer Lou Harrison (who conducted the premiere of the Symphony No. 3) played key roles in introducing Ives' music to a wider audience. Henry Cowell was perhaps the most significant figure in fostering public and critical attention for Ives' music, publishing several of the composer's works in his New Music Quarterly. In 1947 Ives was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 3, according him much deserved attention at the international level. Soon after, his works were taken up and championed by such leading conductors as Leonard Bernstein. By his death in 1954, he had witnessed a rise from obscurity to a position of unsurpassed eminence among the world's leading performers and musical institutions (paragraph from Ives' biography on the G. Schirmer Web site).

Tan will return to the Barnes Hall stage with pianist Blaise Bryski for a second program of American music Sunday, Sept. 26, at 8 p.m., where she will perform Ives' Second Violin Sonata and works by Ross Lee Finney ("Fantasy in Two Movements" for solo violin) and George Gershwin (selections from Porgy and Bess).

Other concerts scheduled this fall to celebrate the music of Ives are: Thursday, Oct. 21, 12:30-1:15 p.m. in B20 Lincoln Hall, "Midday Music at Lincoln," where Martin Hatch will perform; Sunday, Oct. 24, 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall, a guest recital featuring Susan Narucki, soprano, and Donald Berman, piano; and Friday, Oct. 29, 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall, a guest recital featuring Marilyn Nonken on piano.