Concert: An Evening of Leo Ornstein
Aufbau Magazine, April 4, 2002
“performed by the unbeatable combination of Jeanne Golan and Christopher Oldfather.”
[Leo] Ornstein’s piano music was given a full evening at New York’s Greenwich House March 21, performed by the unbeatable combination of Jeanne Golan and Christopher Oldfather. Golan soloed in some of Ornstein’s earliest and latest compositions, bringing great expressiveness to the mechanically demanding figurations. Oldfather’s solos, in music of uncertain dates [in between], were executed with low-keyed almost off-hand wit.
Together they then essayed the Piano Concerto, in a two-piano arrangement by the composer, and wallopingly brought down the house. Why this brilliant work has been so rarely performed since the composer himself premiered it with Leopold Stokowski and The Philadelphia Orchestra must rank as a mystery of the century.