GEORGE ANTHEIL : Piano Concerto No. 2 • Serenade No. 2 • Dreams (Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra · Daniel Spalding · Guy Livingston) (2006) APE (image+.cue), lossless

New World Records' George Antheil: Dreams, Piano Concerto No. 2, Serenade No. 2 takes the all-Antheil disc out of the realm of his symphonies and recitals of little, short piano pieces into other kinds of major literature that Antheil also produced. Dreams is one of Antheil's most infectious works, a ballet written for George Balanchine that co-mingles waltzes, marches, pop tunes, and even Schumann's The Happy Farmer in a lightly applied and certainly "dreamlike" tapestry as diaphanous as the music it was designed to replace, namely Darius Milhaud's Les Songes. One wonders why Balanchine would want to substitute for music that is as lovely as Les Songes, but there was a concern among émigré artists in the 1930s that their productions might be perceived as "too European" for American tastes. In any event, Antheil did Balanchine proud with Dreams, and it is equally mysterious that they did not work together again.

Just as light and precious is Antheil's Piano Concerto No. 2, though dating from his "futurist" period in the 1920s, is likewise light and colorful, although the harmonic palette in use is more daring. Although largely condemned as "pseudo-Stravinsky" when it was first heard, it is clear that the Piano Concerto No. 2 is a continuation of the ideas Antheil first pursued in Piano Concerto No. 1, except that it doesn't contain nearly as many violent contrasts. Antheil's score for Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman helped set the tone for the scoring of movie westerns, and some of that hickory-smoked flavor carries over into his American vernacular onSerenade No. 2, rubbing shoulders with cityscapes, skyscrapers, and lonely walks through dark, rainy alleyways. All three pieces dispense with familiar development schemes and even psychological form in favor of a sort of loose, stream-of-consciousness manner of folding one idea into another, or in making abrupt transitions like "jump cuts" in a movie.

Pianist Guy Livingston, who has done much on Antheil's behalf, is the featured soloist in the concerto, and the whole is performed by the Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra under Daniel Spalding. The recording, made at the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, is good but a little distant, and at times the listener might wish to hear pianist David Hasbrig in Dreams a little better. None of these pieces had been recorded before when this disc was planned, and in the meantime, CPO managed to rush out an Antheil Piano Concerto No. 2 of its own a little ahead of this one. Given a choice between the two, any true Antheilian would want the one with Livingston, and indeed, it is worth the slight wait. Moreover, this is a nicely chosen combination of works that demonstrate that in his youth, Antheil viewed Europe through American eyes, but after his return in maturity, he was seeing America from the perspective of a European sensibility. Uncle Dave Lewis
George Antheil (1900-1959)
1-9.    Dreams    (28:18)
10-12.    Piano Concerto No. 2    (21:40)
13-15.    Serenade No. 2    (22:11)
Credits :
Conductor – Daniel Spalding
Orchestra – Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra
Piano – Guy Livingston

GEORGE ANTHEIL : The Lost Sonatas (Guy Livingston) (2003) APE (image+.cue), lossless

Pianist Guy Livingston has brought his considerable talents to bear on the "bad boy of music" in the Wergo disc George Antheil: The Lost Sonatas. Livingston attempts to reconcile George Antheil's late "populist" music with the clangorous early piano compositions that have become Antheil's calling card to posterity. In the process Livingston uncovers a host of masterworks from both periods, proving that in his piano music, Antheil was neither a publicity hound, a "fake" futurist, nor a slavish imitator of mid-century trends hoping to graze from the same gravy train as Copland.
In a sense, of the three late piano sonatas heard here, Sonata No. 4 has never been "lost" so much as terribly neglected; it was duly published by Weintraub back in 1951 and has been recorded a few times. However, the others, save Sonata Sauvage, have not been played in five or more decades. The Piano Sonata No. 5, which opens the disc, is a real gem, particularly the concluding Allegro, which seems to bring boogie-woogie stylings into the orbit of Prokofiev. The melting lyricism of the Adagio movement of the Sonata No. 3 may surprise some listeners, but it is not so astonishing if you understand the milieu of the short second movement of Antheil's "Airplane" Sonata.
George Antheil: The Lost Sonatas' great strength is not so much in that it introduces so many works never heard before as it shows us how much Antheil's later music is like his earlier music. Hopefully this will bury for all time the criticism of "stylistic inconsistency" that has dogged Antheil in posterity and has contributed to his neglect. Wergo's recording is perfect, picking up the piano's full range, from intimacy in the Sonata No. 3 to the blistering loudness of the Sonata Sauvage, reproducing it all faithfully. The task of playing Antheil's piano music well is in itself quite a feat. It requires the stamina and agility of a boxer tempered with the sensitivity of a poet and a mathematician's sense of logic. Livingston is the champion on all counts, and this is the best compact disc of George Antheil's piano music ever.  by Uncle Dave Lewis