From moody to lyrical, piano pieces that excite

Ornstein: “Suicide in an Airplane,” Piano Sonatas 4 and 7, other works

Janice Weber, piano (Naxos)

***

Ornstein: “Suicide in an Airplane,” Piano Sonata 8, other works

Marc-Andre Hamelin, piano (Hyperion)

*** 1/2

Too often in America, a composer has to die to get recognized -- no matter how long his life. Leo Ornstein was either 108 or 109 when he died last February (his birth date is in doubt) and only now do we have two superb recordings devoted to his piano music.

A raucously virtuosic Russian pianist and composer who immigrated to America when he was 19, Ornstein quickly developed a reputation as a wild man, a Stravinsky on steroids. The brief piano piece of 1913, “Suicide in an Airplane,” was a sensation -- all that bold Futurist banging seeming to take music to the brink of chaos and maybe madness, and making Bartok look like a pussycat in comparison.

In fact, Ornstein also had a soft impressionist side, which totally confused the labelers. Then he confused things all the more by dropping out of public view in the mid-1920s, spending the next 30 years teaching in Philadelphia, finally retiring altogether into obscurity. But he kept composing, mostly piano and chamber music. His Eighth Piano Sonata was completed in 1990, when he was almost 100.

A CD’s worth of Ornstein’s piano pieces can, perhaps, make you slightly seasick -- all the back and forth between fast, fabulously dense percussiveness, black moods and sweet lyricism. But at its best, the music is tremendously exciting when a pianist with Hamelin’s transcendental technique tackles it. Hamelin’s performance of the Eighth Sonata is particularly riveting, taking the feisty old composer at his word when he writes in the score’s last movement to “give it all you’ve got to the end.” Weber, while not quite on Hamelin’s level, is a strong player, and her program is varied, well-recorded and, at its budget price, an excellent introduction to the composer.

-- Mark Swed

Lustrous Baltic choral music

“Baltic Voices 1”

Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Paul Hillier, director (Harmonia Mundi)

****

The Baltic region has been a global hot spot in classical music recently, partly thanks to composers such as Latvia’s Peteris Vasks and Estonia’s Arvo Part and Veljo Tormis. The sound, as represented in this lustrous choral collection, has to do with an artful, organic mediation of contemporary and ancient sonorities. The gifted Estonian Philharmonic singers and Hillier ferret out telling emotional links between distinct national cultures, beginning with historical perspective, in the conventional “Psalm of David,” written in 1923 by Estonian composer Cyrillus Kreek.

From the Scandinavian side, we hear noted Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara’s evocative 1973 work “Lorca Suite,” in which tonality happily marries dissonance, and two pieces by Swedish composer Sven-David Sandstrom, craftily quoting Purcell, Buxtehude and Swedish folk music.

World premiere recordings include Part’s 2000 “ ... which was the son of ... ,” as gently uplifting as Vasks’ “Dona nobis pacem” (another first recording) is filled with spiraling introspection. Tormis’ “Latvian Bourdon Songs” beguiles with its drone-based folk elaborations. Though connected to a European musical temperament, this music is also situated “above” it, and therein lies its particular, enigmatic beauty.

-- Josef Woodard

In brief

Bach: Arias

Angelika Kirchschlager, mezzo-soprano (Sony Classical)

*** 1/2

Kirchschlager brings her intelligence and unfailingly creamy vocalism to Bach’s often surprising text settings. You might expect “So stand against sin,” which gives Cantata No. 54 its title, to be a strong, almost declamatory statement, but Bach sets it instead to a long, gorgeous melody that Kirchschlager unfolds in serene sunniness. Similarly, the mezzo dances through the jaunty, skipping tune of “Lord, as you will,” from the gloomily titled “I stand with one foot in the grave” Cantata No. 156, with all the joyful certainty of a believer’s faith in God’s benevolent will. The calm, otherworldly Sinfonia from Cantata No. 156, with its haunting oboe solo, is the only purely instrumental number on the disc and shifts the focus to the stylish accompanying Venice Baroque Orchestra, which everywhere else supports Kirchschlager warmly and sensitively.

-- Chris Pasles

“The Call of the Phoenix”

Orlando Consort (Harmonia Mundi)

****

Orlando Consort is in typically clear, almost mystical, collective voice, in a set of seldom-heard material from 15th century England. Precious little survives from this time, the era of England’s War of the Roses. What is showcased here, though, possesses considerable melodic luster and varying degrees of polyphonic intrigue.

The ensemble meanders meaningfully through the century’s musical evolution, from the lean early sounds of John Pyamour’s small jewel “Qualm pulcra es,” through John Dunstaple’s “Salve scema” and the porous contrapuntal weave of Walter Frye’s “Ave regina celorum.” Closing the program, from late in the century, is Walter Lambe’s “Stella celi,” ending the album on a note simultaneously ravishing and reverential. Peripherally, the recording conjures up impressions of the turbulent reigns of Henry V and VI and Edward IV, and the slower, calmer musical revolution filling England’s chapels. Early music fans will savor the elegant austerity marshaled here.

-- C.P.

Schubert: Piano Sonata, D. 959; Four Lieder

Leif Ove Andsnes, piano; Ian Bostridge, tenor (EMI Classics)

****

Schubert outlived Beethoven by only a year. But here Andsnes seems determined to make Schubert Beethoven’s heir rather than a voyager into a new and different romantic world. His playing in the Sonata is hard-edged and hard-driven, crystalline, objective, with little letup or yielding. Some lovely pastel tones emerge toward the end of the second movement, only to draw attention to the kind of tone-painting missing earlier. His collaboration with Bostridge in the four Schubert art songs proves a good match. For all his refinement, Bostridge remains a contained, objective interpreter, one who is easier to appreciate than to feel moved by.

-- C.P.