[2] The symphony was premiered to rapturous applause but Ives responded with ambivalence (he reportedly spat)—he did not attend the concert in person, but listened to a radio rebroadcast on March 4.
Ever since his training with Horatio Parker at Yale, Ives had suffered their disapproval of the mischievous unorthodoxy with which he pushed the boundaries of European classical structures to create soundscapes that recalled the vernacular music-making of his New England upbringing.
The sole exception is "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean", whose verse is heard complete and almost unaltered at the climax of the fifth movement as a counterpoint to Ives's original first theme.
[6] Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra recorded the symphony for RCA Victor on February 7, 1973, in a multi-channel version later issued on CD with Dolby Surround Sound encoding.
He had given the UK premiere of Ives's 2nd Symphony in a BBC radio broadcast with the same orchestra on April 25, 1956, a historic performance that has now been released on CD by Pristine Audio.