Piano Works, 1913-1990

Piano Music Of Leo Ornstein In Score

Leo Ornstein (1893 --- 2002) was a child prodigy as a pianist in Russia who immigrated to the United States in 1906 with his family to escape the pogroms and spent the rest of his long life in the United States. Ornstein studied at what is now the Juilliard School of Music and became renowned as a virtuoso pianist while still young. In 1913, Ornstein became notorious for his dissonant, futuristic and iconoclastic piano compositions. At the height of his fame as a pianist in the 1920's, Ornstein withdrew from the public eye. For many years, he operated a music school in Philadelphia. In the 1970s, Ornstein was rediscovered and achieved a limited second fame. He continued to compose well into his 90s.

I have become devoted to Ornstein's music even though I did not know of him until late in my own life. The literature on Ornstein includes a thoughtful biography by Michael Broyles and Denise Von Glahn, "Leo Ornstein: Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices" (2007), together with CDs of Ornstein's extensive solo piano music by HamelinLeo Ornstein Piano Music: Suicide on an Airplane / La Chinoise / Poems of 1917, Op. 41 / Arabesques (9), Op. 42 / Piano Sonata No. 8, Sarah Cahill, Leo Ornstein: Fantasy and Metaphor,Janice WeberOrnstein: Piano Sonatas, and two CDs by Arsentiy Kharitonov.

While recordings of Ornstein have become available, it has been difficult to find scores for his work. This gap has been filled by this new volume, "Leo Ornstein: Piano Works, 1913 -- 1990" published by Dover Press. The volume includes a useful introduction to Ornstein's music by Broyles and Von Glahn, the authors of the biography mentioned above, and a Foreword by the composer's son, Severo, who has devoted much of the past 20 years to organizing and publishing his father's music.

The book consists of 16 of Ornstein's piano compositions, ranging from early in has career to the Eighth Piano Sonata written in 1990 when the composer was 97. The compositions range from short works of a few pages to lengthy sonatas. Ornstein wrote in a variety of styles throughout his life. It is often thought that his music became more conservative after his iconoclastic early years, but this is at best an oversimplification. Ornstein composed in what he called a "modernistic" and an "expressivist" style, and he used them both throughout his life. With all its dissonance, angular and shifting rhythms, and virtuosity, Ornstein was essentially a melodist. He was heavily influenced by impressionism, Russian music, and the Jewish music of his youth. Much of his music has a spontaneous, improvisatory feel. His compositions tend to be loosely programmatic.

The short early compositions that made Ornstein notorious, such as "Suicide in an Airplane" and "Wild Men's Dance" are included, but there is much more. Ornstein's works will be unfamiliar to many, and it thus is probably worthwhile to list the contents of the volume.

Suicide in an Airplane (1913)
Three Moods (1913)
Wild Men's Dance (1913)
Impressions of Chinatown (1918?)
Piano Sonata No. 4 (1918)
Impressions of the Thames (1920)
Impromptu No. 1 (1950s)
Fantasy Piece No. 3 (1961)
Tarantelle (1963)
A Long Remembered Sorrow (1964)
Metaphor No. 3 (1964)
Waltz no. 5 (1966)
A Morning in the Woods (1971)
Waltz No. 12 (1979)
Waltz No 9 (1980)
Piano Sonata No. 8 (1990)

Almost all the music in this book is virtuosic in character and beyond my limited abilities to play. Oddly enough, the piece that may be within the range of amateurs is part of the extraordinarily difficult 8th sonata. The middle movement consists of four short pieces, throw-backs to the composer's childhood, that probably can be learned, with effort.

There is much to be learned from using this book together with recordings. All the pieces in the book are available on one or more of the CDs I mentioned, with other versions accessible online. Ornstein frequently did not provide tempo indications, wrote on three staffs, and often shifted rhythm from measure to measure. Thus, effort is required even to follow a recording with the score, but the reward is an enhanced knowledge of reading scores and a greater appreciation of Ornstein's music.

The print in the volume is large and easy to read, for all the music's difficulties. The book stays open easily and rests comfortably on the piano. The works I most enjoy are the two lengthy sonatas, the highly impressionistic fourth sonata and the challenging, fierce eighth sonata of Ornstein's old age, together with the impressionistic "A Morning in the Woods" which is found on several of the available CDs. Ornstein's extraordinarily late collection of 16 waltzes is included in full on Kharitonov's CD, with scores for three of the waltzes in this book.

Dover Press, Broyles and Von Glahn and Servo Ornstein deserve thanks for this volume of Ornstein's piano music. It will be invaluable for those seriously interested in Ornstein and in 20th Century modernism on the piano.

Robin Friedman