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Central Park in the Dark at Chicago, London, Manchester, Graz

Jan. 23, 2012

Written in 1906 when the composer lived in an apartment near New York’s famous Central Park, Charles Ives’ orchestral work Central Park in the Dark describes a night time walk through the park highlighting the sounds, atmosphere and twilight goings-on.

The orchestration gives the work a programmatic feel with individual instruments taking on their own role. The initial silence is interrupted by the rattling of horse hooves, passing trams or singing night owls and the result is a rich tapestry of sounds that fill the park by night until everything disappears into the darkness again. As Ives describes:

A picture-in-sounds of the sounds of nature and of happenings that men would hear some thirty or so years ago when sitting on a bench in Central Park on a summer’s night.

The performance material for Central Park in the Dark is now available from Schott Music and we are very proud to be the world-wide representatives of this work. It is one of Ives’ most well-know pieces and displays many characteristics of his music such as the inclusion of well-known marches and dances as well as the complex layering of different musical levels.

A number of performances of Central Park in the Dark take place during the month of January.  The Chicago Sinfonietta perform the work on January 16 at the Symphony Centre, Chicago and in Europe the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra give a performance on January 20 at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and on January 23 and 24 the Graz Symphony Orchestra present the work at the Stefaniensaal in Graz.

Learn more on the life and work of Charles Ives’ at www.schott-music.com.

Charles Ives
Central Park in the Dark (1906)
for orchestra
pic.1.1.1(Ebcl).1-0.1.1.0-perc(cym, s.d, b.d)-2pno-str
ca. 9’

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