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 
