Central Park in The Dark - Performance and Recording

Performance and Recording

The first documented performance of the piece was in New York on May 11, 1946 by the chamber orchestra students from Juilliard Graduate School conducted by Theodore Bloomfield. It was performed at an all-Ives concert at the McMillin Theatre at Columbia University as part of the Second Annual Festival of Contemporary America Music. Ives, in a letter for Elliot Carter remembered a different initial performance. In relation to programs to be printed for the concert Ives wrote:

Though it is not an important matter, it would be well—unless the programs for the May concert are already printed—not to put as a first public performance the ‘Central Park- some 40 years ago’ as it was cut down some, in instrumentation, for a Theater Orchestra and played between acts in a downtown Theatre in N.Y. doesn’t remember the exact date or the name of the theater. There was no program, but he thinks it was in 1906 or ’07. The players had a hard time with it—the piano player got mad, stopped in the middle and kicked the bass drum. However, don’t put the above in the program—just omit ‘First Performance’—as he feels, if not, it would be hardly fair to those old ‘fellers’ who stood up for a ‘dangerous job.’

The piece was first recorded in 1951 by the Polymusic Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Will Lorin by Polymusic and has since been recorded by many orchestral groups.