<<  -- 6 --  David Wilkins    TIME TRAVEL

Luxury abounds in the addition of the ad-libitum (Ives was always very 'take-it-or-leave-it') solos for viola and flute. They are short and, in some senses, inconsequential but beautifully played and incorporated here [listen -- track 21 'Thoreau', 8:46-10.06]. Ives was, with the sanity of a born nut-case, content to say that it wasn't the pianist's fault that he has only ten fingers just as it was never the fault of the song that it was unsingable.

I think this is a recording destined for benchmark authority. Fifty years after the death, more-or-less thirty more than that since Ives effectively stopped composing. I'm neither sad nor celebratory -- because I simply can't believe it -- and am grateful to live with his music in what science fiction describes as a parallel universe. Leave the difficult debate to the inheritors of H G Wells or Albert Einstein. Time travel, however relative, is available courtesy of Warner Classics and their inimitable artists at a portal or a disc-shop near you!

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