Composer and pianist Leo Ornstein is known best for two things; (a) being the first "futurist" pianist in the early modern period and (b) being about the longest lived composer in the history of music, dying at 108 in 2002. Neither of these attributes have much to say about Ornstein's music, which has been recorded heretofore in a spotty fashion with the emphasis being on the "futurist" piano music that made his name, a style that he abandoned around 1920. Anyone familiar with his extraordinary Piano Quintet of 1927, ...
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Composer and pianist Leo Ornstein is known best for two things; (a) being the first "futurist" pianist in the early modern period and (b) being about the longest lived composer in the history of music, dying at 108 in 2002. Neither of these attributes have much to say about Ornstein's music, which has been recorded heretofore in a spotty fashion with the emphasis being on the "futurist" piano music that made his name, a style that he abandoned around 1920. Anyone familiar with his extraordinary Piano Quintet of 1927, however, will already know that Ornstein was an expert and deeply serious composer of chamber music and will be predisposed to welcome the advent of New World's Leo Ornstein: Complete Works for Cello and Piano. Performed by cellist Joshua Gordon of the Lydian String Quartet and pianist Randall Hodgkinson, this is the first "complete" recorded survey of any aspect of Ornstein's output, and the five compositions represented span a period of roughly 1914 to about 1931.Some of this music...
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