Early Recordings of Charles Ives' Music

In response to my recent report of early recordings of the music of Edgard Varèse, longtime blog reader David Federman asked me if I had this pioneering 1951 record of Charles Ives' music. Not only do I have it, I had already transferred it for presentation here.

The LP, on the short-lived Polymusic label, was made when Ives was still alive (he died in 1954, at age 79). At the time, his reputation was growing. He had won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947 (even though he stopped composing in 1930), and such advocates as Bernard Herrmann, John Kirkpatrick, Nicholas Slonimsky, Lou Harrison and Helen Boatwright were programming his music.

Nonetheless, recordings were few and the music was still little known. Most of the performances in this album are first editions, possibly all of them except for the second violin sonata, which Patricia Travers had done for Columbia in 1950. These include such pieces as "The Unanswered Question" and "Central Park in the Dark," which are today far more familiar than they were then.

These and the other orchestral works are led by Vladimir Cherniavsky. I had not encountered his name before, so did some research. Online sources generally suggest that the name "Vladimir Cherniavsky" is a pseudonym for Will Lorin. But when I looked deeper, I found that it is actually the other way around.

Ives in his back yard, 1951

I believe that Vladimir Cherniavsky was the birth name of a composer-conductor-writer who was the son of another composer-conductor, Joseph Cherniavsky (or Josef Cherniafsky). The elder Cherniavsky was associated with the Yiddish theater and made a number of records in the 1920s. The younger Cherniavsky first shows up as a composer of a piece presented by one of the radio orchestras on air in the early 40s. He then disappears until this 1951 session.

Cherniavsky thereafter apparently made his living under the name Will Lorin, both as a writer and composer-conductor. Among his credits were working with Duke Ellington to adapt "A Drum is a Woman" for television in 1956, and providing the musical backing for Harry Belafonte's "An Evening with Belafonte" in 1957. In 1960, Lorin wrote the incidental music for the Broadway play Send Me No Flowers. Less auspiciously, he put together a 1963 General Electric industrial record called "Music to Drill Oil Wells By".

Elliot Magaziner

On the Ives LP, Cherniavsky leads an orchestra of New York studio musicians. Performing the violin sonata are Elliot Magaziner, who played in the CBS television orchestra, and pianist Frank Glazer. Joining them for the Largo is clarinetist David Weber.

The LP is a fine accomplishment, considering the music was all but unknown at the time and is highly individualistic. The reviewer for The New Records wrote at the time: "To lear this music, not once but several times, is to have a new and wonderful experience. Imagine what would have been said in 1908! ... The demands on the musicians are great and they answer that challenge with much skill and conviction."

The album is labeled Volume One, but I can't find any evidence that it was succeeded by other volumes. The sound is excellent.

Note (November 2024): this has now been remastered in ambient stereo. The download includes complete scans and contemporary reviews.

LINK to early Ives recordings