Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, Gordon Binkerd

condition (record/cover): NM / VG (seams splits and wear and two tags on back)

A programme of American violin sonatas on Desto, spanning three generations and three very different compositional temperaments. Aaron Copland's Sonata For Violin And Piano (1943) is among his most serious and least performed works, written in a spare neo-classical style that makes none of the populist gestures of the ballet scores. Charles Ives's Sonata No. 4 ("Children's Day at the Camp Meeting") is, by contrast, a characteristically heterogeneous mixture of hymn tunes, camp-meeting energy, and formal complexity. Gordon Binkerd's contribution offers a third angle: a composer of the American academic mainstream whose carefully crafted chamber works have circulated mostly within specialist circles.