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 resulted from Ornstein's friendship with cellist Hans
Kindler, who later founded the National Symphony Orchestra. The Sonata
No. 1 Op. 52 of 1915 is the first fruit of that relationship, bears the
strongest kinship with Ornstein's futurist work, and yet remains
strongly lyrical, Ornstein fighting against his own stream. All of the
music here is to some degree rooted in his Russian Jewish heritage and
the music that would have surrounded him at the St. Petersburg
Conservatory of his youth. The Six Preludes in particular demonstrate
his comfort with the arcing line of cello, mystic Scriabin-esque
harmonies and widely spaced chords in the piano in slow movements and
propulsively rhythmic fast movements that recall some of the best
characteristics of his futurist music. Some of it makes you think of
Bartók, but it doesn't sound like Bartók at all and seems more like a
halfway house between post-romanticism and the early modern. It is great
music and doesn't sound in the least dated or derivative. Perhaps a
better comparison would be to early Roslavets or Alexander Krein, yet
Ornstein is tighter and more focused than Roslavets and considerably
less "ethnic" sounding than Krein. Ornstein's music sounds more Russian
than American, and is more "romantic" in feel, while remaining
stubbornly modern in terms of its harmonic building blocks.
It sounds like major music, and these are major performers -- Gordon has
studied this music closely and he and Hodgkinson have worked out the
knotty problems relating to Ornstein's impatience in writing his music
down. In some cases they have had to rely on their own reading of the
pieces to get the fine details down in terms of dynamics, tempo, and
expression, as Ornstein's scores are silent on this point. All of New
World's Leo Ornstein: Complete Works for Cello and Piano is absorbing
and revelatory, and the recording, from Mechanics Hall in Worcester, MA,
is just right. by Uncle Dave Lewis
Mostrando postagens com marcador Randall Hodgkinson. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Randall Hodgkinson. Mostrar todas as postagens
15.2.22
LEO ORNSTEIN : Complete Works for Cello and Piano (Gordon-Hodgkinson) (2007) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless
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