David Wolf writes:

>I found one recording devoted entirely to Ornstein's compositions,
>and ordered it after hearing the samples.  It's a quintet for piano
>and strings, plus I believe his 3rd String Quartet.  Anyone out there
>familiar with his music?

I know that recording.  The piano quintet (1927) is passionate, often
dissonant but thoroughly tonal with a little polytonality, and makes heavy
use of Jewish cantorial modes and melodic fragments: in short, it sounds
uncannily like Ernest Bloch's music of the same period.  Interesting that
this struck listeners as so avante-garde in the 1920s.

It is also extraordinary that Ornstein, a close contemporary of Milhaud,
Prokoviev, Martinu, Hindemith, Harris, outlived them all by so many years.
What did the guy DRINK? Maybe his secret is the cast of mind that led him
to give up the concert stage, explaining: "One beautiful day I decided
I could not stand the incessant practicing".

Jon Gallant    ([log in to unmask])