Naxos American
2006
Ives: String Quartets
About This Album
It has been awhile since anyone recorded a new disc of Charles Ives' string quartets, and here the Blair String Quartet takes the plunge. He only wrote two numbered quartets that are like equivalents to night and day -- the radiant, camp meeting-inspired First Quartet and the furiously punk-meets-transcendentalism Second. String Quartet No. 1, "From the Salvation Army," dates from 1898 and contains some of Ives' finest instrumental music couched in a reasonably stable and conventional style. The opening Chorale of the First Quartet is decidedly not played at a pace of Andante and appears uncharacteristically zippy. The Blair, in its haste, fudges a key transition in the last third of the piece. However, this need for speed works well for the second-movement Prelude, although it fails to cover for a rough edit at one point. The Offertory is all right, but experienced ears are starved for more "love" in this music -- a case of point would be the old Vox LP of the First Quartet by the Kohon String Quartet, where the music is handled lovingly, and not in a winking, tongue-in-cheek manner.

The only other works Ives wrote for string quartet are the Scherzo Holding Your Own and the Intermezzo from the cantata The Celestial Country.
Track List

String Quartet No. 1: From The Salvation Army, For String Quartet, S. 57 (K. 2A1)
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Scherzo, For String Quartet, S. 83
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String Quartet No. 2, For String Quartet, S. 58 (K. 2A3)
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