It is a truism that there is no one right way to play a piece of music. But with Ives there is no one right text to start with either—the piano sonatas evolved through different notated versions, and when Ives played them he would generally depart from the text and go off on a spur-of-the-moment mystery tour. That doesn't mean there is nothing to be said for choosing a text and sticking to it, however. Knowing in advance what the notes are going to be releases the interpreter's faculties to concentrate on the grandeur of Ives's long paragraphs. But it does mean there is no bar on improvisatory freedom or spontaneous inflections.
These latter ingredients are conspicuous by their absence from John Jensen's recording. For all his praiseworthy accuracy and admirable dexterity he steamrollers both sonatas with his inflexible, harsh-toned and colourless playing, seemingly oblivious to the raptness of Ivesian poetry or the visionary elation of Ivesian virtuosity.
Donna Coleman errs on the opposite side. However welcome her sensitivity to harmonic tensions her rhapsodic freedom saps the music's vitality and diminishes its dynamic thrust. The result in quieter passages is a kind of wrong-note Debussy, and when virtuosic demands are at their height there is a need for greater depth of sound and sharper definition. Although the brief flute solo in the finale of Concord is accompanied far more poetically than it is by Jensen, the effect is ruined by the flute itself being consistently under the note. Recording quality is rather dry—Music and Arts do rather better for Jensen.
There's no pleasing some people, is there? Well, I don't want to sound sour about these recordings—a considerable amount of dedication has obviously gone into both of them, and I particularly welcome Donna Coleman's inclusion of four variant passages from the opening ''Emerson'' movement of the Concord Sonata (which are actually less conspicuously variant than I had anticipated). But for Concord Marc-Andre Hamelin on New World/Koch International is streets ahead of both newcomers; and can I yet again enter a plea for DG to reissue Roberto Szidon's 1972 recordings of this and the Three-Page Sonata? A new version of the tremendous First Sonata is much to be desired—John Jensen's does not fit the bill, however.'