Wizards & Wildmen - Piano Music of Charles Ives, Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison

Anthony de Mare, pianoCharles Ives, Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison belong together by virtue of a complex network of personal and musical connections. All three were rebels and innovators who today are revered as emblems of the radical spirit in American music. When their music was new all three were dismissed as mavericks or eccentrics, or damned with faint praise as “pioneers” — labels that emphasize only one aspect of their work and obscure an equally important one: the seriousness of their commitment to making a new sort of American music true to their own vision and experience.This disc reminds us that all three men were pianists, and the music recorded here was written in the first instance for their own performance. However, each of the three composers had a distinct relationship to the piano. After his youth Ives rarely played in public: the piano became the instrument at which he composed and tried out ideas. Cowell, in contrast, attracted a great deal of notoriety as a perform