By PHILLIP LUTZ
The sun was setting outside Aaron Copland’s home in Cortlandt Manor as November winds began to blow. But inside, amid the cozy music room, the rehearsal was heating up as the pianist Michael Boriskin and the ensemble Music From Copland House rendered a rousing version of Charles Ives’s epic Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano.
Teasing out such quirks of history is one aspect of what Copland House is about. Dedicated to the creation and presentation of American music, the organization focuses on illuminating essential truths about the music. In the process, its programming reveals a web of influences and interests that have shaped it.
In that spirit, the Ives trio, which Mr. Boriskin and his colleagues — Nicholas Kitchen on violin and Wilhelmina Smith on cello — were rehearsing for what proved a well-received concert on Nov. 15, will lead logically to Copland House’s next program, on Dec. 6, titled “American Mavericks.”
“A piece like this could fit beautifully on that program,” the violinist Tim Fain said, referring to the Ives trio. Mr. Fain will be featured at the Dec. 6 concert at the Merestead estate in Mount Kisco, which Copland House uses as its main performance space.
But musically, Mr. Boriskin said: “Ives and Cowell are part of the same American experimentalist tradition. These guys were real iconoclasts.”
Closing the concert will be Mark O’Connor’s “Poets and Prophets.” A four-movement trio on which the cellist James Wilson will join Mr. Boriskin and Mr. Fain, the piece moves toward an ending that makes it a natural for pairing with “Grand Duo,” Mr. Fain said.
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