Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra

American composer Charles Ives was actually an insurance broker by trade. His great oeuvre – which established a new American musical culture – came about as a side-line, if we can call it that. His music anticipates much of what European composers would only discover in the second half of the twentieth century: in particular the collage principle, theatricality, and the overlaying of and confrontation between traditional and popular forms. American transcendentalism was another major influence on his work: it is what gave his music its utopian character. With Ives’s Symphony No. 4, which was composed for a large orchestra, the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra now presents one of his most complex works. Today, Ives is known as one of America’s most important composers, but most of his works were only discovered later. His Symphony No. 4 premiered in New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1965, eleven years after Ives’s death.