{"id":15202,"date":"2014-01-02T15:39:49","date_gmt":"2014-01-02T19:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=15202"},"modified":"2014-03-15T17:42:31","modified_gmt":"2014-03-15T21:42:31","slug":"leo-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=15202","title":{"rendered":"Leo Who?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Sedgwick Clark<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Forgotten repertoire is usually forgotten for a good reason. But the industrious Pacifica Quartet and Canadian pianist Marc-Andr\u00e9 Hamelin hit pay dirt with the Piano Quartet of Leo Ornstein at Zankel Hall on November 19. Ornstein (1893-2002) studied violin at St. Petersburg Conservatory. After his family migrated to New York City, he received a scholarship at the Institute of Musical Art (later Juilliard), where he studied piano. His early works, in the teens, were apparently the essence of enfant-terrible<\/i>ism. Vivian Perlis and Libby Van Cleve quote a horrified review in London\u2019s Daily Mail<\/i>, March 27, 1914, in their Composers\u2019 Voices from Ives to Ellington <\/i>(Yale, 2005), a must read for anyone interested in American music:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWILD OUTBREAK AT STEINWAY HALL<\/span><\/p>\n

A pale Russian youth dressed in velvet, crouched over the instrument in an attitude all his own, and for all the apparent frailty of his form, dealt it the most ferocious punishment. Nothing as horrible as Mr. Ornstein\u2019s music has been heard so far\u2014save Stravinsky\u2019s \u2018Sacrifice to Spring\u2019 [sic<\/i>]. Sufferers from complete deafness should attend the next recital. . . .\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He gave the first performances in America of Ravel\u2019s Gaspard de la nuit <\/i>and Sonatine<\/i>, Schoenberg\u2019s Drei St\u00fccke<\/i>, Op. 11, and Scriabin\u2019s Ninth and Tenth Piano Sonatas. \u201cIn about 1920,\u201d write Perlis and Van Cleve, \u201cat the height of his performing career,\u201d Ornstein abandoned his performing career to compose and teach. His modernist style became more lyrical, of which the Piano Quintet (1927) is an example. It was commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, the notable philanthropist who commissioned such works as Bart\u00f3k\u2019s Fifth Quartet, Stravinsky\u2019s Apollon musag\u00e8te<\/i>, Prokofiev\u2019s First Quartet, Ravel\u2019s Chansons mad\u00e9casses<\/i>, Schoenberg\u2019s Third and Fourth quartets, Poulenc\u2019s Flute Sonata, and Copland\u2019s Appalachian Spring<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Pacifica foursome and Hamelin have been performing Ornstein\u2019s Piano Quintet nearly everywhere the past\u00a0year, and they will record it for Hyperion this month. Nearly 40 minutes long, it\u2019s a spooky piece. The driving intensity of the opening movement\u2019s Allegro barbaro<\/i> alternates with exotic lyricism, perfectly integrated by the impassioned Pacificans and flawless fingerwork of Hamelin. French influences pervade the middle Andante lamentoso<\/i>, which momentarily segues into the \u201cLittle Egypt\u201d or snake charmer hoochie-coochie music (\u201cAll the girls in France . . .\u201d) popular in America in the first three decades of the 20th century before returning to the initial lyricism. Bart\u00f3kian folk dance influences the final movement, which ends quietly. <\/span><\/p>\n

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim in her review on the Times <\/i>web (11\/22) perceptively characterizes Ornstein\u2019s style in this work as \u201cLate Late Romanticism\u201d and wonders why it isn\u2019t in the standard repertoire. Good question.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Pacifica\u2019s ardent Beethoven\u2019s B-flat Quartet, Op. 130, with its original Grosse Fuge<\/i> final movement, was a crowd pleaser, but to me was no competition after that spellbinding Ornstein discovery. <\/span><\/p>\n

Perlis, incidentally, was Musical America<\/i>\u2019s Educator of the Year in 2011, and Van Cleve wrote our tribute to her. Vivian pioneered her invaluable oral history recordings of American composers and performers while at Yale University, and Libby succeeded her as director of the school\u2019s Oral History program.<\/span><\/p>\n