Paul Jacobs (organ), San Francisco Symphony/ Michael Tilson Thomas SFS Media SFS 0038 ****

Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata calls out for orchestration in the same way Beethoven’s

Hammerklavier

does. There’s so much more in it than any pair of hands can ever make clear. But orchestration eliminates the individual performer’s struggle towards the unreachable,

which helps make both pieces what they are. Henry Brant’s orchestration of Ives’s celebration of 19th-century New England transcendentalism is intended to provide “clear, vivid and intense sonorities” rather than Ivesian complexity. Brant has, perhaps, succeeded too well. It’s the more intimate

and tender moments that work best in this impressive new performance. The coupling is an utterly gorgeous recording of Aaron Copland’s modernist Organ Symphony of 1924, another work that engages with Beethoven’s most famous four- note motif. See url.ie/9eb2