His genius during his first years of creation was lyrical
purely. It was a thing that expressed itself in picturing moods, in
making brief flights, in establishing _moments musicaux._ He is at his
best in his piano preludes, in his small forms. The works composed
during this period in the larger forms, the violin sonata excepted, are
scarcely achieved. The outer movements of the Grand Sonata for
pianoforte, for instance, are far inferior to the central ones. Whatever
the merit of some of the individual movements of "The Masqueraders,"
Opus 36, and the "Poems of 1917," and at times it is not small, the
works as a whole lack form. They have none of the unity and variety and
solidity of the "Papillons" and the "Carnaval" of Schumann or the
"Valses nobles et sentimentales" of Ravel, for instance, works to which
they are in certain other respects comparable. As he grew a little
older, Ornstein's nature probably began to demand other forms beside
these smaller, more episodic ones. It probably began to strive for
greater scope, duration, development, complexity. And so, in order to
gain greater intellectual control over his outflow, to learn to build
piles of a bulk that require an entirely different workmanship and
supervision than do preludes and impressions, Ornstein doubtlessly has
been withholding himself, diminishing the intensity of his fire.
Pages:
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279