The 150th anniversary of Ives’s birth and 70th of his death has so far occasioned relatively few recordings, making this anthology (part new release, part reissue) from Jeremy Denk and Stefan Jackiw welcome in illuminating two genres the composer made his own.

It makes sense to present the violin sonatas in reverse order so as to accentuate their intensifying expressivity. Jackiw and Denk ensure the Fourth Sonata is modest only in duration, its genial outer movements framing a Largo of a soulfulness as ably realised as its sudden explosion of activity. Still too often criticised for exemplifying what Ives was supposed to decry, the Third Sonata is persuasively interpreted: the eloquently unfolded ‘verses’ (variations) with unifying ‘refrain’ (theme) of its opening movement, the keenly articulated syncopations of its Scherzo and the abrupt while never disjunct changes in emotion of its finale make for a reading to savour.

By contrast, the evocations in the Second Sonata feel too generalised – the animated interplay of ‘Autumn’, uproarious humour of ‘In the Barn’ or inward fervency of ‘Revival’ just a little detached. Not so the First Sonata which – from its impulsive opening movement, via a Largo plaintive yet fervent, to the combative though ultimately resigned mood of the final Allegro – emerges as conceptually the most integrated of these works and hence a plausible point of arrival.

Originally released on Denk’s own label, the piano sonatas were worth making more widely available. His take on the First Sonata is at its best in its even-numbered movements – these ‘scherzos with introductions’ having a litheness or capriciousness slightly lacking elsewhere. The Concord is similarly most perceptive in the quixotic mood swings of ‘Hawthorne’, with neither the discursive rhetoric of ‘Emerson’ nor acute pathos of ‘The Alcotts’ fully conveyed, and the flute obbligato almost incidental to a ‘Thoreau’ somewhat circumspect in its introspection.

In the violin sonatas, Hilary Hahn and Valentina Lisitsa remain first choice but this new set is preferable overall to the engaging if sometimes abrasive Curt Thompson and Rodney Waters or the subtle if often aloof Hansheinz Schneeberger and Daniel Cholette. In the piano sonatas, Joonas Ahonen is insightful and appositely coupled, but Tamara Stefanovich’s acute volatility in the First and Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s keen precision or Alexei Lubimov’s deft profundity in the Concord lead their respective fields. Denk’s annotations are unashamedly polemical in tone with their abundance of provocation and devil’s advocacy: Ives might have been amused at certain observations, bemused at others, though the contention that ‘He is one of history’s least popular populists’ is one he would surely have commended with unabashed enthusiasm.