On the 150th birthday of Charles Ives - hailed by Leonard Bernstein as "the first great American composer" who "created his own private musical revolution all alone in his Connecticut barn" - Sony Classical presents the most significant collection of works by this eccentric, prophetic genius ever released. The Anniversary Edition is a unique and provocative introduction, released on LP 50 years ago by Columbia Masterworks under the artistic direction of Henrietta Condak to celebrate the centenary of Ives' birth. CD 1 explores "The Many Faces of Charles Ives" through eight different works recorded between 1964 and 1970: Bernstein conducts the New York Philharmonic in The Fourth of July and The Unanswered Question; General William Booth enters into Heaven, one of Ives' towering works, and The Circus Band are performed by the Gregg Smith Singers; baritone Thomas Stewart sings the moving song In Flanders Fields; organist E. Power Biggs plays Ives' Variations on "America"; composer Gunther Schuller conducts The Pond for chamber orchestra; and the anthem Largo cantabile is performed by the New York String Quartet and double bassist Alvin Brehm. CD 2, "The Celestial Country", contains Ives' early cantata of the same name, which he composed in 1897-1899 for his conservative composition teacher Horatio Parker at Yale. It is sung by the Gregg Smith Singers (accompanied by the Columbia Chamber Orchestra), who also perform arrangements of four of Ives' most powerful patriotic songs with the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski. "The Things our Fathers loved" (CD 3) contains 25 songs by Ives, performed by soprano Helen Boatwright, who specializes in American songs. She is joined by John Kirkpatrick, who studied and worked closely with Ives and is still regarded as the definitive interpreter of his piano music. Gramophone praised this famous recording in 1974 as "the best selection ever to appear on LP" of "what may prove to be his most important, characteristic and consistently inspired work". The next CD is unusually revealing: "Ives Plays Ives" shows the composer himself in the years 1933 to 1943, recording excerpts from his groundbreaking "Concord" Sonata and shorter piano pieces in the New York recording studio of Mary Howard, Toscanini's sound engineer. In his performance of the slow movement of the "Concord" Sonata, "The Alcotts," one Gramophone commentator wrote that Ives' playing was "heartfelt but matter-of-fact, a yin-meets-yang quality that embraces clever performances. Over three brief excerpts from "Emerson," the sonata's opening movement, the author goes on to write, "Ives gives pianists a tonal blueprint for the basic sound he envisioned: bangy attack, boozy rhythmic freedom; this is not the time or place for deliberately refined, "pretty" playing." The final disc of the set is entitled "Charles Ives Remembered". This fascinating collage of spoken memories is the first documentation of a musical personality using the oral tradition. More than 50 interviews with family members, friends, neighbors and colleagues paint a vivid memoir portrait of this dazzling personality in the voices of those who knew him best. Compiled by award-winning musicologist Vivian Perlis, the recollections and reflections range from Ives' childhood and his years at Yale to his public career as an insurance executive and his private career as a composer, offering a multifaceted and human picture of an enigmatic American musical icon.