Charles Ives: Universe Symphony

To encompass the entire world with symphonic means – this megalomaniac idea was obviously in the air around the turn of the 19th into the 20th century. In 1915 Charles Ives also succumbed to it: inspired by the philosophy of the American transcendentalists, he planned nothing less than a musical portrait of the creation – from prehistoric beginnings to the evolution of nature and humanity to its future elevation to purely spiritual spheres. For many years, he worked on this ambitious project; ultimately its completion proved beyond his powers.

Thanks to Johnny Reinhard’s convincing performance version of 1996, we can still experience the work: its complex polyrhythms and microtonal structures, which are coordinated by two conductors, its extraordinary, rather percussion-heavy instrumentation, the »earth chord« in the basses and the majestic »pulse of the cosmos«. As the creator of the world, Ives presumably had to fail, but his »Universe Symphony« shows him as a daring visionary and indefatigable experimenter.