Vytautas Bacevicius, Orchestral Works I

Today, another 20th century modernist composer who has suffered neglect, one Vytautas Bacevicius (1905-1970), brother of the far better-known Grazyna Bacewicz. His legacy and its relative obscurity have something to do with the fate of circumstances. He was on tour concertizing as a virtuoso pianist in South America when WWII cut him off from his Polish homeland. He migrated to the United States and lived out his years there with some success but perhaps more as a pianist than a composer. If he is all-but-forgotten today, a number of recordings seek to redress that, most notably his Orchestral Works I (Naxos 8.573282), played by the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra under Christopher Lyndon-Gee.

Three works get our attention, two of which enjoy first recordings. They all stem from his period of exile, ranging from 1946/49 through 1962. Piano Concertos Nos 3 & 4, the latter in first recording, feature pianist Gabrielius Alekna as soloist. The 1958 "Spring Suite" appears in the middle of the program, and is the other first recording.

All the music has an Eastern European modern chromatic expansiveness. The album shows us a composer that perhaps has Scriabin as an influential forebear but otherwise seems to move within his own orbit, neither archaic nor Serialist-Darmstadtian. It is music well thought-through and takes a few hearings to assimilate. The Fourth Concerto is something of a major find, with a difficult and dexterous piano part, a very advanced orchestral presence, a very modern feel to it, on the edge of tonality and beyond.

The performances are good, especially those by soloist Alekna. There could possibly be even better performances someday but for now this gives us a vivid, balanced and dramatic picture of a compositional personality that deserves recognition. Anyone with an interest in Eastern European modernists should hear this one. And so should anyone following 20th century developments. I will certainly want to hear this disk a good many times more. It is complex and satisfying music that sounds fresh and very much alive. I look forward to future volumes.

Leo Ornstein, Piano Music Volume Two, Arsentiy Kharitonov

As one continues to listen to music throughout life, there are moments of surprise, usually pleasant, that can occur from time to time. One such came about when I listened to and reviewed Leo Ornstein's Piano Music Volume One (see post, October 22, 2012). Ornstein came to a certain amount of notoriety as an early modernist in the US in the second and third decades of the 20th century. The LPs I had managed to find years ago focused on that period, with some intriguing music but nary a hint that there was anything else. It turns out that Ornstein led a long life (1894-2002) and continued to compose. There was much more to hear! That continues to be so with the release of Leo Ornstein's Piano Music Volume Two (Toccata Classics 0167), a revelation in its own right.

Ornstein, both Jewish and Russian, spent his childhood in his native land, coming to New York in his early teens. He gathered attention as one of the proto-avant composers on the scene and then fell into obscurity. But as Volume Two makes even more clear, he kept going. Arsentiy Kharitonov brings passion and dash to the works represented here and they are sometimes fiendishly difficult. In their best moments they show a composer of extraordinary originality, combining Russian-Jewish roots with a touch of neo-impressionism, and a well-wrought modernism that sometimes startles with brash dissonance and kinetic fire.

The centerpiece of the volume is a wondrous series of waltzes (s400-16), 17 in all, composed between 1958 and 1980 but somehow recalling an earlier world, both of the avant early years and the late romantic Euro-Russo ethos, as if seen and refracted through the prism of time. They are marvelous, as is Kharitonov's acutely multi-stylistically sensitive performances. They occupy more than an hour's time in the program and make for essential Ornstein, well worth experiencing!

"Suite Russe" in seven parts takes us all the way back to 1914. It shows an Ornstein thoroughly steeped in impressionist-romantic ethno-melodic vibrancy, very beautiful and memorable.

The last is a glimmering impressionist "A Morning in the Woods" from 1971, showing the sensibilities of someone as if emerging from a time-machine to bring us genuine expression from an era now long gone.

This is a beautiful disk, revealing for us an Ornstein we have never fully appreciated, perhaps until now. A master.