James Sinclair has been a dedicated Ives scholar and performer for more than 30 years, which means this CD has to be something special. First on this issue comes the hymn-saturated Third Symphony, where Sinclair uses some of the thinly sketched options in the manuscripts. This means there's a bit extra in the distance at the end of the first two movements and slighty more of the barely audible bells, ingeniously made to sound like an outdoor carillon, at the end of the last movement, compared with Slatkin and the St Louis orchestra. There are more distant effects if you listen carefully.
In The Unanswered Question Sinclair uses the version with two flutes and two clarinets rather than four flutes for the attempted answers to the questioning trumpet. Then, in Central Park inthe Dark, he uses a battered upright piano for the bits taken from the 1899 hit-song 'Hello! ma Baby' which suggests the tavern scene in Berg's Wozzeck. It works, but unfortunately the piano, marked fff, almost fades out at the climax.
There are two little-known early pieces which Ives drew on for 'Putnam's Camp', the second of Three Places in New England. The Country BandMarch has hilarious junketings as an affectionate reflection of the mistakes of amateur players – Sinclair takes an option without the final chord which leaves the dilatory saxophonist exposed after the end. Then the Overture and March,'1776' goes to town with a brass player using the wrong instrument so that quite a lengthy passage comes out in parallel semitones! Vintage Ives, all played with completely idiomatic feeling and adequately recorded.