Interested in Leo Ornstein?

[lontano]

For anyone interested, and this may be common knowledge, Leo Ornstein has a home website at: https://leoornstein.net/index.htm where much of his music in score and mp3 can be found for free.

I just stumbled upon it and haven't explored it in detail.

L.

[retrouvailles]

He was definitely an interesting composer, and a very long lived one (died at around 108 years of age). His early works are in a very harsh, jarring idiom, but are very enjoyable and passionate works. His later, more neoromantic works are a mixed bag to me. Some works are very good, and others are not so much. His piano sonatas, which are in this later idiom, are worth exploring. Take a look at Hamelin's disk for a nice anthology of his works. He also has a very good piano quintet worth looking at.

[lontano]

He was definitely an interesting composer, and a very long lived one (died at around 108 years of age). His early works are in a very harsh, jarring idiom, but are very enjoyable and passionate works. His later, more neoromantic works are a mixed bag to me. Some works are very good, and others are not so much. His piano sonatas, which are in this later idiom, are worth exploring. Take a look at Hamelin's disk for a nice anthology of his works. He also has a very good piano quintet worth looking at.

Shortly after I made this post I discovered (and remembered) I already had a generous collection of Ornstein's music, which I once reveled in but soon forgot. I'm not certain what that implies, but I can say that year after year my lust to discover new music wanes and waxes in ways I can always expect, but rarely anticipate.

In my earlier days as a Music Librarian, I took the time to attempt the understanding of the American composers from roughly 1900-1940. Mostly I found Ives. I studied all of Ives as possible, but also those who were thus influenced I attempted to understand, and there were many remarkable LPs in the library I inherited that (at very least) opened my mind toward the radicals of the mid-20th century (if you have any current music history you know a bit about most of them).

Leo Ornstein was hardly a note on the LP sleeve of a bigger Harry Partch collection back in the 1970's, so the implied direction was toward Partch, but where are his disciples now? Where is Ornstein now? Seems to me, after many years Ives got (much) of what he deserved, and Ornstein is having his more important music cut from the chaff of his rash experimentalist days, and there is here, something to consider as repertoire for the equipped and daring pianist wishing to bring the discovery of American music to the concert hall.