Gerald Finley, Julius Drake - Ives: Romanzo di Central Park & other songs

In a second disc of Ives�s songs, the unbeatable partnership of Finley and Drake again enthral their listeners and bring them to the emotional core of each work.The range of style and approach in Ives�s text-setting is startling�from simple, sentimental ballads to complex and strenuous philosophical discourses, sometimes encompassing the most dissonant and virtuosic piano parts, sometimes with the accompaniment pared down to an almost minimalist phrase-repetition. Even those composed in a superficially conventional or �polite� tonal idiom usually contain harmonic, rhythmic or accentual surprises somewhere.A particular beauty is Mists, composed in 1910. The poem is by Ives�s wife Harmony�an elegy after her mother�s sudden death that year. The manuscript, written while on vacation at Elk Lake in the Adirondacks, is dated �last mist at Pell�s Sep 20 1910�. This exquisite and deeply felt setting, with its brume of Impressionistic harmonies in contrary motion, is among Ives�s most atmospheric songs.This thrilling collection also includes Ives�s War Songs and settings of Goethe.