In the comments under my post of October 20 – Charles Ives’ 150th birthday anniversary – I was made to realize that in my 40 years of concertgoing I have never heard an Ives symphony live. How can this possibly be? It’s not like I wasn’t living in a good place, with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic at my disposal. But I missed the Ormandy days in Philly (his associate, William Smith, conducted Ives’ 2nd in 1983, the year before I moved there) and the cost and time investment to get to New York, with a pain-in-the-ass train transfer in Trenton, meant that trips in to “the City” were rare. (Bernstein programmed and recorded Ives’ 2nd at Avery Fisher Hall in 1988.)

So imagine my excitement when my friend, H. Paul Moon – the filmmaker with whom I’ve been working on a documentary about the cellist Leonard Rose – contacted me to let me know that Leon Botstein and The Orchestra Now (TŌN) would be bringing Ives’ 2nd as part of an all-Ives concert to be performed at Carnegie Hall tonight. His email began, “Small thing here, nothing special, and there’s always another time, but…”

My response was through-the-roof excitement.

It so happens, I did notice that TŌN was scheduled to perform the same program at Bard College last weekend – the college is also the base of the Bard Music Festival I so adore (next summer the focus will be on the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu and his world) – but getting there on a good day is a three-hour drive, and I would have gone on a Sunday afternoon, which would have meant automatic end-of-weekend traffic on my return. So I was on the fence about it – they do so many good concerts up there (of course, many of them are livestreamed, but it’s not the same as being in the hall, at the Fisher Center at Bard) – but when I learned they would be bringing the show to Carnegie, I didn’t even have to think about it. I didn’t even look at my schedule. If I had anything else planned, I would change it. I’m in!

And what a program! “The Fourth of July.” “Central Park in the Dark.” The Orchestral Set No. 2. And THE SYMPHONY NO. 2!!! Pardon me for shouting, but this is quite simply not only one of my favorite American symphonies; it’s one of my favorite symphonies by anyone, anywhere, for all time.

Everyone knows Ives the iconoclast, the experimentalist, the cranky Yankee who smashed harmonies and rhythms together like a recalcitrant toddler with its toys in a playpen. But the Symphony No. 2 is different. It distills all of Ives’ musical experiences into one beguiling work that’s like a snapshot of a faded America, with its hymn tunes, parlor songs, and patriotic marches, recollected through a nostalgic, but no less vital for it, glow.

It also serves as a portrait of the artist as a young man, assimilating works by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Dvořák, Bruckner, and others. So if you were ever curious to hear Beethoven’s 5th Symphony and Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” rub shoulders with “America the Beautiful,” “Camptown Races,” “Turkey in the Stray” and “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,” then this is the symphony for you. Truly, the more you know about music, the more you’ll be able to get out of it.

All that aside, the music is simply gorgeous, transporting, and exciting – of its time, and perhaps even now (though a lot of the allusions will likely be lost on many), quintessentially American. For me, this is a perfect Thanksgiving concert.

Before each piece, baritone William Sharp will sing some of the songs Ives references. There will be a pre-concert talk at 6:00, with the performance beginning at 7:00.

Of course, any time I’ve got a ticket to Carnegie Hall, it rains. I’d say there’s a good 90 percent chance of that happening, always. Well over a month, probably six or seven weeks, without rain in New Jersey, and now there’s rain in the forecast for today and tomorrow. Next time there’s a drought, just buy me a ticket to Carnegie Hall.

I’ll try to add a picture of the poster tonight.

For more information about the concert, look here:

https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2024/11/21/The-Orchestra-Now-0700PM

Leonard Bernstein introduces Ives’ Symphony No. 2