Orenstein: Piano Sonatas (2002)

Leo Ornstein At The Piano

The cover of this Naxos "American Classics" CD features a painting with the title of this review. The painting is by Leon Kroll (1884-1974) and is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. It dates from 1918 and features a young Leo Ornstein, his sensitive and handsome features deeply wrapped in concentration as he plays upon an open grand piano. The left hand is raised in the air with the expectation of a crashing chord to follow.

From about 1910 to the mid-1920's, Leo Ornstein (1892? - 2002) was a charismatic concert pianist. He was known as well for his dissonant, haghly avant-garde piano music. Then, in the mid-1920's, Ornstein abruptly abandoned his performing career and retired from public view. He founded a music school in Philadelphia and continued composing in a variety of styles. Orenstein died in 2002 in Green Bay, Wisconsin at the age of 109 or 110. After his initial sensational career as a pianist, documented in the cover art, Ornstein lived a quiet life.

This is a CD of Ornstein's piano music covering the span of his long life. The works are lovingly performed by Janice Weber, who also writes novels. The thouough liner notes were written by Ornstein's son, Severo Ornstein, who maintains a website devoted to his father's music.

The disc includes three short pieces from Ornstein's early avant-garde Career: Danse Sauvage (1913), Impressions of the Thames (1914), and Suicide in an Airplane (1913). These pieces are highly percussive and dissonant, with heavy chords in the bass (look again at the cover painting) alternating with lighter treble sections. These pieces remain a challenge to hear and, I am sure, to play. They appear to me in the nature of virtuosic encore pieces which the composer-pianist might have played at the conclusion of a concert devoted to recent music and perhaps to some Chopin.

The remainder of the CD is a mix of shorter pieces written later in Orenstein's life and two substantial piano sonatas. The sonatas, in particular, are intriguing, challenging music. Both the sonatas on this disc show a mixture of styles.
The fourth piano sonata dates from 1924 and is in four movements. It is largely lyrical and reflective with a final movement, marked vivo, that builds to a climax in its concluding pages. I found this music heavily influenced by French impressionism. The first movement in fact quotes Debussy's "Au Claire de Lune" several times. There is also a Russian influence derived from the mystical music of Scriabin. This is a well-integrated meditative work.

The Seventh Piano Sonata (1988) is a challenge. It continues to show the strong influence of French impressionism and has lyrical, accessible sections interspersed with complex, modernistic passages. The work is in three movements each of which is in tripartite form with a middle section contrasted to the two outer sections. This music will need repeated hearings. But I was taken with it.

There are three remaining short pieces on the CD. "A Morning in the Woods: (1971) is impressionistic and plangent with the sound of falling leaves. "A Long Remembered Sorrow" (1964) is a romantic work tinged with melancholy which again reaches its climax in the concluding moments. The "Tarantelle" (1960) is a running, shimmering quick piece with a quiet middle section. In this Tarantelle, I thought again of encore music.

Some listeners will find this CD forbidding. But one of the joys of music lies in the delight in finding little-known composers who speak to one. I found Ornstein such a composer. His long life showed composition and creativity in both modernistic and traditional forms. It was a life devoted to the art of music.

Robin Friedman