Although the work was composed during Ives's 20s, it was half a century before it was premiered, on February 22, 1951, in a New York Philharmonic concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein. 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. The public performance had been postponed for so long because Ives had been alienated from the American classical establishment. 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.