Charles Ives has grown into one of the most important American classical composers of international distinction, but it wasn’t always like this: Ives was frustrated by indifferent audiences and ambivalent critics throughout his entire career and most of his life. Violinist Paul Zukofsky and pianist Gilbert Kalish perform Sonatas No. 3 and No. 4. Evidently, the range of compositional devices Ives used—polytonality, atonality, complex multi-rhythms, tone clusters, twelve-tone rows, metrical modulation, and microtonality—“disturbed or bewildered nearly all of [Ives’] contemporaries.” But the sonatas present some of the most appealing and listenable material Ives produced. See also FW03346 Charles Ives: The Sonatas for Violin and Piano, Vol. 1.

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