John Noel Roberts: Charles E. Ives: First Sonata for Piano
Albany Records

While a number of new recordings of Charles Ives' “Concord” Sonata have appeared during the past few years, the same isn't true of the composer's first sonata. Yet as noted by pianist John Noel Roberts in the text he wrote for his recording, Maurice Hinson opined that “this landmark of American piano literature has more cohesion than the ‘Concord' Sonata.” If Roberts' performance of the first sonata doesn't inspire other pianists to record their own versions, we'll at least have his tremendous treatment to return to.

In its conceptual imagining and musical character, it's a quintessential Ives work. Church hymns are incorporated into each of the five movements and thus impart a programmatic dimension to the work. While the odyssey undertaken by the male protagonist is Homeric, the dramatis personae aren't Greek gods and mythological creatures but instead an American family. As fashioned by Ives, the narrative arc involves a young man leaving home to sow wild oats and experience the world before returning at sonata's end to the welcome arms of his now relieved family. The hymns, while they're easy enough to identify when they arise, are wholly refracted and skewed by Ives in his inimitable fashion, the result a composition that's never less than fascinating. Roberts helpfully clarifies that a “germ motive (a descending minor second and minor third) permeates the entire forty-minute sonata.”

Begun when Ives was in his late twenties and completed when he was thirty-six, the sonata was thus written during his formative years and had behind him material he could draw upon when creating a new piece (its first and fourth movements derive, according to Roberts, from Ives' “Four Ragtime pieces of 1902-1904”). Such a work requires a formidable pianist to do it justice, and Roberts is certainly that. Currently on faculty at Our Lady of the Lake University, this graduate of Eastman and Yale has taught at a number of universities and colleges and delivered solo and concerto performances around the world. Playing a 1926 Steinway D 237402 piano, Roberts recorded the album at the University of the Incarnate Word's Diane Bennack Concert Hall in San Antonio on March 9, 2024.

Consistent with the work's narrative design, Ives integrated into the mercurial first movement “I Was a Wandering Sheep,” its words “I was a wayward child, I did not love my home, I did not love my Father's voice, I loved afar to roam” clearly relevant to a saga about a restless young adventurer. At the same time, the other hymn referenced, “Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight?,” speaks to the family's anxiety over the son's departure. Every moment of the performance bears Ives' stamp as Roberts weaves a dense web of intense chromatic ruminations into a gripping statement. Developing out of clusters of low-register sonorities, the material swells with elemental force but also contracts into quieter realms as the hymn allusions appear.

With the advent of the animated second movement, the boy's far from home and, given the presence of the hymn “O Happy Day, Bringing in the Sheaves,” basking in his newfound freedom. A jazzy ragtime feel—Gershwin-esque at one moment—emerges, as do chorus sections based on the hymn “I Hear Thy Welcome Voice,” and the music's characterized by a lighter feel, the dark, oppressive shadings of the opening movement a fading memory. As a mood of parental anxiety permeates the third movement, the hymn this time the soulful “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” it's understandable that its tone would be brooding and turbulent; that it would include an opulent middle section comes as a surprise, however.

The peaceful close of the third is in stark contrast to the clangorous frenzy with which the robust fourth begins. While a reprise of “Bringing in the Sheaves” occurs, the penultimate movement also includes the hymn “I Hear Thy Welcome Voice,” with its words “I am coming home, coming home to thee” portending the young man's return to the family. Perhaps more than in any of the movements, the hymns ring out most clearly in the fourth. A grandiose odyssey unto itself, the twelve-minute concluding movement alternates between dramatic and contemplative passages as it evokes the son's reintegration into the family and a reprise of the first movement's “I Was a Wandering Sheep” brings the work full circle. Spidery patterns aggressively entwine until the material advances towards its quasi-mystical resolution with a meditative exploration of the germ motive in an upper register.

December 2024