To review a recording from a highly underperformed repertoire presents a serious moral challenge. Lacking a frame of reference places an enormous burden on performers whose recordings will immediately be linked to the composer. For the listener, a leap of faith is necessary to combat any undue biases surrounding the piece itself. This very issue seemed to arise in the aftermath of September's release of Leo Ornstein: Piano Quintet, String Quartet No.2, recorded by Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin and the Pacifica Quartet. To be blunt, the works of Russian-American Futurist Leo Ornstein are severely underperformed. This is partially due to Leo Ornstein's own aversion to the spotlight, and partially due to modernists' rejection of his ideas, once his ideas grew too modern for even their sensibilities. The result is the tragic wake of a nearly forgotten genius. Meanwhile, Marc-André Hamelin and the Pacifica Quartet, along with other musicians, are determined to remind the world of what could be lost.
The irony of Leo Ornstein's obscurity is that the time-span of his contributions is so vast it actually ranges close to a world record. As reported in his 2002 obituary, Ornstein was born c.1893, was playing piano by age 3, entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory at age 11 (where he studied under Aleksandr Glazunov), immigrated to the U.S. in 1907, began studying at the Institute of Musical Art (now the Juilliard School), and made his debut in 1911. Living until the age of approx. 108, he composed for more than 80 years.
A piano virtuoso beyond measure, Ornstein took after the tonal complexities of Russian composers like Scriabin & Stravinsky, impressionists like Debussy, and injected them with fearsome tonal clusters and the exuberance of a thoroughly American experience. The result was what musicologists of his day were calling "futurist" music. By the 1920s, after a rigorous youth of extensive touring and worldwide fame, Ornstein began to shy away from performance due to lingering stage fright and general disgust over a fickle music community. The remainder of his compositions were intermittently published, but rarely performed until he was rediscovered in the 1970s. His last composition, the "Eighth Piano Sonata", was written in 1990.
Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin is not a stranger to Ornstein's work. In 2002, he recorded Leo Ornstein Piano Music: Suicide on an Airplane / La Chinoise / Poems of 1917, Op. 41 / Arabesques (9), Op. 42 / Piano Sonata No. 8. His recent endeavor, with the Pacifica Quartet, was to be a re-visitation of Ornstein's most monumental work, the Piano Quintet (or Quintette for Piano and Strings). According to a website maintained by the composer's son, Severo Ornstein, there are only three available recordings of Ornstein's Piano Quintet, one recorded by Pianist William Westney, one by Janice Weber, and most recently, the one by Marc-André Hamelin and the Pacifica Quartet. Presumably, it was one of the former two that Pacifica Quartet Violinist Sibbi Bernhardsson referenced in an interview with NOLA.com [The Times-Picayune] when describing her exposure to the piece: "When Hamelin sent us a score and a live recording, we realized that Ornstein's quintet was too important not to be played. We were ready to invest our time and our emotional energy." In response to its difficulty, she went on to say, "Preparing this quintet is like preparing for a marathon... Technically, it's very difficult, but it's also highly emotional: a work that requires extra stamina from performers. You need to pace yourself, to make sure that you don't misstep as the music switches from loud, fast passages to soft transparence."
Samples from Marc-André Hamelin and the Pacifica Quartet's recording of Ornstein's Piano Quintet can be heard in the video below.
Despite the obvious enthusiasm for the project, reaction to the September release has been mixed. Some critics seemed taken aback. They were faced with a skillfully-commanded behemoth, which, despite having been written in 1927, possessed an audacity than could humble even the gutsiest contemporary composers. The Guardian responded with a curt review that, although praising the well-established talents involved, said, "...even they can't disguise the fact that Ornstein's obsessive treatment of small blocks of musical material becomes monotonous in both works, and that the long finale of the Quintet is spectacularly overblown." Shaving further away at the composer, BT Classics wrote, "Evidently counterpoint was on the list of theoretical subjects Ornstein had no time for. As a result, when he adds super-luxuriant harmonies and pianistic cascades to the mix, he merely reinforces the impression of a massively talented student rather than a mature composer." Frequently, it seems critics have turned a treatment of the performance into a treatment of the piece itself.
While other reviews focused on the positives of Hamelin's delivery, it is true that, structurally, Ornstein's Piano Quintet follows its own rules. There is an inner-logic to the piece, a logic that doesn't leap out on a first, second or third listen. The first movement is easily the most accessible, borrowing from late Romantic tradition, but its themes are largely rhythmic, its melodies expansive, and its recapitulations almost non-existent. Instead, Ornstein uses all three movements of the piece to rework material, sometimes transforming it beyond recognition. When that happens, a fascinating thing occurs: emotions are not merely stated; they are chronicled, exposed, and given a kind of musical catharsis against a variety of backdrops. The very through lines that cause us to lose our place in the piece can also make us transfixed by it. In each movement, Ornstein violently challenges the listener, but also amps up the reward. Lustrous flashes of tonal complexity await anyone who can follow Ornstein's paragraphical style of composition.
Now despite this writer's obvious preference for the work, criticism is never off the table. Marc-André Hamelin and the Pacifica Quartet's version of Ornstein's Piano Quintet conveys an unmistakable passion for the project. But on behalf of the naysayers, there may be some interpretative discrepancies that hinder this tribute from spurring true immersion. Of subtle importance: blending, haste, glitz, and an effusiveness all seem to pose a problem in the long haul for the Pacifica Quartet. In the short term, these elements enable the Quartet to capture Ornstein's beauty in a truly awe-inspiring way, and in doing so they establish themselves as perhaps the most skillful of Ornstein performers yet. But one must remember that the piece was clearly written with a longer, more interconnected story in mind. The effect is like reading a solitary paragraph of a Charles Dickens novel. On its own, the brilliance of the writing should leap out to all... but the larger story, the moral, and the arc are left behind.
Hamelin and the Pacifica Quartet's interpretation seems to string together a series of these paragraphs in impressive but, at times, indiscriminate dynamic logic ---something that, as previously indicated, can all too easily be ascribed to Ornstein himself. Until hearing Pianist William Westney's recording of the piece from the 70s -- one that was made during the height of the composer's resurgence -- I, too, along with the other critics, thought that the last movement of Quintet was an exercise in extravagance, an "incorrigible artist" moment, i.e., a composer problem. But the Westney version helped shift the piece under different lighting. Through the scratchiness of now-inferior equipment and through the pragmatic performances of Westney (piano), Daniel Stepner, Michael Strauss (violins); Peter John Sacco (viola); and Thomas Mansbacher (cello), the first-ever recording of the Quintet stays true to the score every step of the way. Its strength lies in its patience. It holds back and allows the natural beauty of the score to overtake what performers' discretion might otherwise muddle. Since so much of what Ornstein wrote concerns multi-minute narrative arcs, visualizing a single measure in the context an entire movement is the single greatest challenge for an Ornstein performer.
"Mvt. I" from William Westney's recording of Ornstein's Piano Quintet
It seems that Hamelin and the Pacifica Quartet's desire to diversify the wealth of the Ornstein library had let in a kind of eagerness, a roiling fire in their bellies that would greatly serve just about any other piece, but here seemed to clash with Ornstein's inherent volatility. Still, one must give Hamelin far more than just an A for effort. When it comes to jump-starting a repertoire, works like those of Ornstein's (and like many of his contemporaries') are the most challenging because they exist at the very edge of what the best composers try to do. They manifest complex narratives into previously well-understood mediums, leaving behind conservatives who stay in their lane, but also anarchists who cross hopelessly beyond the threshold. Hamelin's rendition of Ornstein's Piano Quintet stands at the crossroads of these daunting challenges and should be praised for standing there at all.
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