Time travel Charles Ives died fifty years ago today - and a CD released to mark the occasion is appreciated by DAVID WILKINS '... a recording destined for benchmark authority.'

Composer anniversaries, being nothing much in themselves, are supposed to be a time for reflection and, perhaps, reassessment. The necessary commercial wiles of concert promoters and recording companies we can absorb and understand without buying-in to the full putative significance. So, hey -- it's fifty years, or a hundred, or some multiple or division of either of those token numbers since genius X or near-genius Y or still-sadly-undervalued Z entered or quit the mortal battle against the challenging virginity of his/her manuscript paper!

Charles Ives, who, after my prolonged bouts of defensive certainty and aggressive doubt, I have decided must be, simultaneously, a complete nut-case and a musical-god died fifty years ago. Well -- who would have thought it or, indeed, who wouldn't?

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