This page contains a single entry from the blog All I Know².
Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.
Last night, Berkeley pianist Sarah Cahill nearly concluded the month-long Berkeley Arts Festival series of concerts at the abandoned Gateway Computer store on Shattuck Avenue with a solo recital of fourteen pieces by Leo Ornstein (1893-2002). (I say "nearly" because there is one more concert tonight with another Berkeley pianist, Jerry Kuderna, and Argenta Walther, mezzo.)
Nearly all the performances were, essentially, world premieres, even though these works were written sometime between 1959 and 1980.
Ornstein, one of the mythic maverick composer/performers you've probably never heard of, arrived in New York City in 1907 and immediately enrolled in piano classes. He made his debut in 1910, demonstrating a fiery technique and onstage charisma that immediately branded him as an "ultra-futurist". By 1919 he was drawing crowds at his concerts like a rock star.
Wait a minute. 1919?
Right. Ornstein died in 2002 at the age of 109 !
Part of his mythic stature, besides his advanced age, is that he gave up performing altogether in the 1930's and opened a music school in Philadelphia with his wife. He continued composing, producing some 1800 pages of piano music in total, but most if it he stashed away in a drawer, apparently not interested in public performance.
Sometime around the 1970's, various composers and musicologists started wondering what ever happened to Ornstein? There was quite a lot of interest then in a number of elder maverick composers who seemed to have faded out after the second world war: Cowell, Nancarrow, McPhee, Antheil,...
Charles Amirkhanian found the Ornsteins living in a trailer park in Texas, having retired there from Philadelphia. And since the 90's, their son Severo has been organizing, editing, and printing Leo's scores. Many are now available as free PDF downloads from www.LeoOrnstein.net.
Since then a number of his pieces have seen performance and recording. But still just a small number.
Last night Sarah Cahill played the three Fantasy Pieces from 1961, A Morning in the Woods (1971), and two of the Three Tales, (Rendezvous at the Lake, and A Fantasy) from 1977, as well as six of Ornstein's Sixteen Metaphores (#1, 3, 8, 9, 11, 16) composed between 1959 and the mid 60's, and ending with Solitude (1978) and To a Grecian Urn (undated).
These pieces and others will appear on a CD Sarah is preparing of Ornstein's piano music.
Unfortunately, only a handful of avid Berkeley Arts Festival followers managed to attend the concert. If you weren't there you really missed something.
Much of the music references the period of Ravel, Scriabin, and Debussy, but in a more advanced way. I even heard touches of Koechlin and, as Sarah pointed out in her introductions, Gershwin. A kind of perfumed elegance and expressiveness bordering on the atonal but never quite there.
I would really like to hear these pieces again. Especially the Metaphores. They seem improvisatory, and may have, in fact, been transcribed improvisations.
This was a great way to (almost) end the Berkeley Arts Festival. Sarah has a wonderful way of pulling some wonderful pieces out of the shadows of obscurity. One hopes that more pianists will discover Ornstein's music just for the thrill of it.
Last night's performances were wonderfully intimate and beautifully performed on the exquisite Grotrian 9 1/2 foot grand piano lent for the occasion by the J-B Piano Company of San Rafael.
Looking forward to the recording. Ornstein's music is woefully neglected (only John Becker, perhaps, is more neglected). There was a recording way back when of his sonata for violin and piano, something I think I might have heard once in concert in Chicago during the early 80's. The piece is amazing, and the score is also available on the Ornstein site. He was way ahead of his time, doing things that only Cowell and Ives had envisioned. Excellent news that his piano music is being heard, especially the works that had only come to light posthumously.
