This 2004 Hyperion recording is actually Marc-André Hamelin's second traversal through Ives' Concord Sonata; his initial venture being among the first of his commercial recordings, made back in 1988 for New World Records. Back in the days of LPs, you were lucky to get two new "Concords" in the course of a decade; Hamelin's was at least the third new recording of the sonata in 2004. No two recordings of the "Concord" are quite the same, not even Hamelin's two, for in comparison to the New World, the Hyperion is shorter ...
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This 2004 Hyperion recording is actually Marc-André Hamelin's second traversal through Ives' Concord Sonata; his initial venture being among the first of his commercial recordings, made back in 1988 for New World Records. Back in the days of LPs, you were lucky to get two new "Concords" in the course of a decade; Hamelin's was at least the third new recording of the sonata in 2004. No two recordings of the "Concord" are quite the same, not even Hamelin's two, for in comparison to the New World, the Hyperion is shorter overall by about a minute, shorter in each movement except "Thoreau," which is a shade longer.At a total time of 42:54, this is one of the faster recordings of the "Concord," and to some degree faster is better, as Ives himself played it pretty fast, judging from his own fragmentary recordings of this work. No one, however, has quite gotten the "Concord" down to the zippy 38 minutes that John Kirkpatrick delivered on his Grammy-winning, and long unavailable, 1968 recording for CBS. Some...
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