Concert: Ornstein Concerto in Two-Piano Version
The Boston Herald, June 25, 2002
“The two performers complemented each other perfectly. Oldfather excelled in the sonata’s more neurotic moments, and I thought smoke might actually start coming out of his ears during the almost unbearably aggressive finale. Golan played with similar energy but seemed more intent on bringing out the music’s lyricism. Together, they gave us everything the music had to offer….”
Key Piano Performances Kick Off Super NEC Series
The Summer Institute for Contemporary Piano Performance (SICPP) at New England Conservatory is an annual weeklong event that offers an intensive course of study in, well, contemporary piano performance.
Directed by NEC faculty member Stephen Drury, SICPP also offers concerts, all free, that are among the most important of their kind to be heard in Boston all year.
Last night’s opening concert in this year’s series, featured superior performances of a dazzling pair of works from the early part of the last century: Charles Ives’ First Piano Sonata, composed in various bits and pieces between 1909 and 1927, and Leo Ornstein’s Sonata for Two Pianos, adapted by the composer from his 1925 Piano Concerto.
To some, this might stretch the definition of contemporary. Ives, after all, died in 1954. And while Ornstein died only this February, aged about 109 (his birth date is uncertain), the virtuoso pianist-conductor-composer mostly disappeared from public view after the 1950s. Pianist Jeanne Golan, who performed the Ornstein Sonata with Christopher Oldfather, came across the manuscript score a few years ago and has made promoting the work something of a personal cause.
It’s certainly a worthy one. On the surface, Ornstein’s music recalls that of Prokofiev, what with its long passages of percussive rhythm alternating with haunting exoticism. It has enough jagged edges and dissonant chords to qualify as modern, but enough sheer beauty to qualify as timeless.
The two performers complemented each other perfectly. Oldfather excelled in the sonata’s more neurotic moments, and I thought smoke might actually start coming out of his ears during the almost unbearably aggressive finale. Golan played with similar energy but seemed more intent on bringing out the music’s lyricism. Together, they gave us everything the music had to offer, at least in this arrangement. Their performance certainly made me yearn to hear the original for piano and orchestra.
by T.J. Medrek