Charles Ives - Symphony No. 2

New York Philharmonic Leonard Bernstein Date: 1990 Symphony No. 2 was written by Charles Ives between 1897 and 1901. Although the work was composed during Ives’ 20s, it was half a century before it premiered, in a 1951 New York Philharmonic concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein. The symphony premiered to rapturous applause but Ives responded with ambivalence. Indeed, he did not even attend the concert in person but had to be dragged by family and friends to a neighbor’s house to listen to the live radio broadcast. The public performance had been postponed for so long because Ives had been alienated from the American classical establishment. Ever since his training with Horatio Parker at Yale, Ives had suffered their disapproval of the mischievous unorthodoxy with which he radically pushed the boundaries of European classical structures to create soundscapes that recalled the vernacular music-making of his New England upbringing. Like Ives’ other compositions which honor the Eu