Customer Reviews

Ornstein: Piano Sonatas

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is one of the discs I listen to quite often, making it a great buy, even if Hamelin's performances of a few of the pieces have more fire. A Morning in the Woods is a lovely piece that is not dissonant and can appeal to a large crossection of listeners. Similarly, there is the Long Remembered Sorrow. People focus too much on pieces like Danse Sauvage, which are more interesting as an artistic statement than as music. The 7th sonata is, as others have said, a great piece and Ms. Weber does a fine job. I think one reviewer's comparison between the 4th sonata and Rachmaninov is inaccurate. I don't hear Rachmaninov in the work at all. If you're a buyer looking primarily for jagged/primal dissonant work, get Hamelin's disc. But, if you're interested in more impressionistic work as well as modern, this disc offers a larger perspective on Ornstein's body of work.

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.

this is an excellent cd. very interesting and unique. some tracks are very "atonal" sounding while many others are strangely beautiful. highly recommended.

just get it and listen to it. there aren't words...

Very well performed music which deserves to be better known. Check out his piano quintet also -- a sui generis work.

This is unrivaled virtuosity, dissonant and strange. Highly recommended

I am sorry you do not have negative stars, like the "Vom-Org" scale. I am not sure how Leo got his cats to stay on the keyboard while they fought, but he should receive points for that skill, at least. Different strokes for different folks. Just sorry I had to pay in advance. Don't need another target, so if someone pays for shipping, I would be happy to share this CD forever.

With Ornstein it is not so much the music but an unrealized aura: the hysteria that surrounded his perfomances, his walking away from fame to devote himself to composing, his stable and long lived family life. Granting dissonance is not for everyone, there are brief airs of musical interest, but they are lost in what can be described best as organized noises. After listening to this, one will be left with two impressions: a piano lesson with Ornstein must have been unrivaled, and it is better to have borrowed this CD then to have bought.