On today’s date in 1939, pianist John Kirkpatrick gave a recital at Town Hall in New York City. First up on his program was a piano sonata by Beethoven, which was followed by the New York premiere of the complete “Concord” Sonata by the American composer Charles Ives.

Ives had self-published his “Concord” Sonata some 20 years earlier, and sent dozens of copies of it free to anyone he thought might be interested. Apparently, one recipient was Rubin Goldmark, who, in 1921, was giving composition lessons to the young Aaron Copland. Copland recalled seeing a copy of the Concord Sonata on Goldmark’s piano, but was not allowed to borrow it. “You stay away from it,” Goldmark warned him. “I don’t want you to be contaminated by stuff like that.”

In 1934, John Kirkpatrick saw a copy of the “Concord Sonata” in Paris, and wrote Ives: “I have decided quite resolutely to learn the whole sonata.” It would take him five years, but Kirkpatrick’s Town Hall recital would put both him and Ives on the map. A New York Times critic wrote, “This sonata is exceptionally great music—it is, indeed, the greatest music composed by an American, and the most deeply felt and essential... Kirkpatrick’s performance was that of a poet and a master, an unobtrusive minister of genius.”