condition (record/cover): NM / VG+ (light ring wear)

A British pressing on Argo - the Decca subsidiary with a distinguished catalogue of chamber music - pairing Charles Ives's Trio For Violin, Cello And Piano with Aaron Copland's Quartet For Piano And Strings. Ives's Trio (c.1904-11) is characteristically heterodox: three movements of wildly different character, incorporating college songs, hymns, and a fugue, unified by nothing except the consistency of Ives's imagination. Copland's Quartet (1950) shows the composer in his more austere twelve-tone mode, far from the populist Americana of Appalachian Spring, and still undervalued as a result. A thoughtful pairing of two composers who represent very different models of how American music might relate to its European inheritance.