This live Ives cycle was recorded in February of 2020 at Walt Disney Hall, and it made a splash at its performances at the time. There is an outlook that, as with Russians and Shostakovich, it takes American conductors to really get the Ives symphonies, with their profusion of vernacular references big and minute. That will have to be rethought in view of this superb set of readings from Gustavo Dudamel, conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Dudamel has rightly received praise for his magnificently detailed Symphony No. 4, which uses a second conductor, Marta Gardolinska. This dense score, which very easily devolves into sonic mush, emerges here with exceptional clarity right from the beginning of the opening-movement Prelude, with an offstage choir, a piano, and numerous orchestral details. The Second and Third symphonies have the right slightly mystical, transcendent use of American hymns and folk music, but perhaps Dudamel's greatest triumph here is the Symphony No. 1, so often taken as a student exercise in the late Romanticism of Brahms and Dvořák. That is certainly an element of its style, but Dudamel's delicate reading brings out the work's questing quality. Yes, it has big Romantic tunes, but here, they always seem to be on the point of turning the corner and going in a new direction. Deutsche Grammophon's engineering is extraordinary: there is virtually no audience noise, and the extraordinarily complex textures come through without a hint of distortion. A superb accomplishment of which all can be proud, guaranteed to bring hours of absorbing listening.
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