Piano Music By Leo Ornstein (2002)

Hamelin Plays Ornstein

With his musicianship and virtuosity, Marc-Andre Hamelin has recorded both familiar music, including among much else Haydn, Schumann, and Mozart, and unfamiliar music for the piano. Hamelin's 2002 recording of the solo piano music of Leo Ornstein (1892 -- 2002) falls in the latter category. Ornstein was a child prodigy who immigrated with his family to the United States in 1906 where he studied at the predecessor to the Juilliard School of Music. As a young man, Ornstein had a sensational, notorious career as a composer and pianist, writing short, technically forbidding, avant-garde pieces which he performed in concerts. In the 1920s Ornstein faded from the public eye. He continued to compose well into the later years of his long life. Late in his life, Ornstein was rediscovered and there has been a continued interest in his music following his death.

This CD includes works from Ornstein's "wild man of music" days to his last important work, the piano sonata no. 8, composed in 1990 when the composer was in his late 90s. Most of Ornstein's early music tends to be miniaturist and programmatic. That is the least of it. His works are highly dissonant, angular, percussive, with large clangorous chords and shifting rhythms. The composer's reputation as an avant-gardist and futurist was well-earned. Ornstein was a virtuoso at the keyboard, and these early works require a virtuoso of Hamelin's gifts to perform.

Ornstein's signature piece during his early, flamboyant career was the "Dance Sauvage" (wild man's dance), a dissonant, barbaric-sounding work of under three minutes. Hamelin brings out the visceral nature of this short piece with his matchless technique and musical gifts. Another work which has become representative of Ornstein's early output is "Suicide in an Airplane" which offers a pulsating musical picture of a small plane going down with heavy, repeated bass figures.

Even in his early music, Ornstein mixed modernism with what he was to call expressivism -- highly emotive, frequently lyrical passages. While showing the discordance of the avant-garde, many of the early works on this CD also have their lyrical, quiet moments. "A ;la Chinoise" features a lyrical interlude in addition to the sharp, clustered music. The ten short pieces on the Great War, "Poems of 1917" range in length from less than one minute to about three and one-half minutes. These works have rarely been played in their complete set of ten, as Hamelin does in this CD. The pieces are harsh, but moving. Another group of nine miniatures, called "Arabesques" are even shorter and include a range of lyrical, expressive passages together with the young composer's modernistic dissonance. The final early work on this CD, the "Impressions of the Thames", is longer than its companions. This work of about seven minutes makes great use of a shimmering impressionism as a counterpoise to its modernistic style.

The work which drew me to this CD, however, was the sonata no. 8, as I had heard some of Ornstein's earlier music in other recordings. Ornstein's eighth sonata, a work of his old age, is a large-scale three-movement piece of about thirty minutes. Hamelin offers the only recording currently available of this work, and it is likely to be definitive. The work consists of two lengthy, difficult outer movements, titled "Life's Turmoil and a Few Bits of Satire" and "Disciplines and Improvisations" surrounding a second movement titled "A Trip to the Attic -- A Tear or Two for a Childhood forever gone". This movement is a work of nostalgia in which the composer remembers his Russian boyhood. It includes four short vignettes, titled, "The Burglar", "A Lament for a Lost Toy", "A Half Mutilated Cradle -- Berceuse", and "First Carousel Ride and Sounds of a Hurdy-Gurdy." These four little pieces are far more accessible than the outer two movements of the sonata. Ornstein's Eighth Sonata is a wonderfully difficult piece full of harsh, vigorous passages together with many lyrical quiet sections in both the outer two movements. It is a sustained composition and much better integrated in its various elements that the works from the composer's youth. This may be one of the works for which Ornstein will be remembered. It is a massive, worthy achievement.

I didn't have any familiarity with Ornstein until about 2003, when I heard pianist Janice Weber's solo recording on Naxos' "American Classics" series but my love for the composer has continued to grow. Several recordings of Ornstein's music for solo piano are available in addition to recordings of his works for cello and piano and violin and piano. Ornstein's masterpiece, the Piano Quintette has been recorded by Hamelin with the Pacifica Quartet. Michael Broyles and Denise Von Glahn have written a highly thoughtful biography, "Leo Ornstein: Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices" (2007) ; and they have also prepared a volume of Ornstein's piano music published by Dover, "Leo Ornstein: Piano Works: 1913 1990". This book includes the Eighth Piano Sonata and has inspired me to practice and learn the second movement from this otherwise forbidding, virtuosic work. The book also includes the "Suicide on an Airplane", "Danse Sauvage" , "A la Chinoise" and "Impressions de la Tamise" included on this CD. It adds a great deal to listening to follow the works in score and to see the complex textures, shifts of rhythms,. and contrasting dissonant and lyrical sections of the music.

This CD is an outstanding way for listeners to get to know the modernism of Leo Ornstein together with the pianism of Hamelin.

Total Time: 77:18

Robin Friedman