Two Early Recordings of Ives' Third Symphony

The third symphony of Charles Ives had to wait about 40 years before its first public performance in 1947, but within the next decade it had earned the two commercial recordings, presented here.

Ives had written the symphony circa 1904, basing it on earlier organ compositions. He revised it later in that decade. But it wasn't until Lou Harrison and the New York Little Symphony took it up in 1946 that it gained notice and a subsequent Pulitzer Prize.

The young Charles Ives

The first recording was led by Richard Bales and his National Gallery Orchestra on August 6, 1950. A local publicly supported radio station, WCFM, issued it on its own label.

This was followed in 1955 in a version for the Vanguard label by the Baltimore Little Symphony and Reginald Stewart.

Richard Bales

Both are worth hearing; the Bales recording made while Ives was still alive, and the Stewart shortly after his death. Bales leads what sounds like a very small orchestra in a careful rendition. The Stewart reading is smoother.

The symphony is sometimes called The Camp Meeting, and the movements "Old Folks Gatherin'," "Children's Day" and "Communion." I don't believe that the documentation for either recording mentions this.

Composer-critic Arthur Berger wrote that the work "was prophetic of the hymn-tune style Copland and Thomson later developed as one means of being American in idiom. Though prophetic, it is far more conservative than the next Ives symphony. It goes on too long at too even a temper, but certain given sections ... must be considered music of quality."

For his fill-up, Bales chose his own arrangement of "Music of the American Revolution," which has less to do with the revolution and more to do with the apparent evidence that all the pieces that Bales arranged were once heard by George Washington. They are pleasant.

Reginald Stewart

Stewart selected a neoclassical Suite for Strings and Oboe by the fine American composer Richard Donovan. Alfred Genovese is the soloist.

While longing for a recording of the fourth symphony, Berger lamented "we must be content with his Third Symphony, which Stewart did well to record in Baltimore (Vanguard 468) now that the older [i.e., Bales] version has been withdrawn. Richard Donovan's suite for strings and oboe on the overside is a serious effort, robust and motory, but a bit short on ideas in the finale."

Both covers include imagery of colonial churches, which must have been considered the right approach for Ives, who had been an organist in a Presbyterian church. The Vanguard artwork is by Rockwell Kent, like Ives a transcendentalist. Kent's sketches graced other Vanguard covers of the time.

Good sound on both. 

Note (November 2024): These recordings have now been remastered in ambient stereo. The download includes complete scans and a number of reviews.

LINK to Bales recording

LINK to Stewart recording