It would be small wonder,
then, if an artist like Ornstein, who, like every real artist, requires
the contact of other minds and cannot go on producing, hopeless of
attaining performance and exhibition, had finally flinched and wearied
of his efforts, and suddenly found himself writing such music as the
intelligences of his fellow-craftsmen can reasonably be expected to
comprehend.
There are other reasons that might lead one to presume that these recent
works represent a slump. For Ornstein has been devoting too much of his
energy to concertizing. He has been traveling madly over the United
States and Canada for the last few years, living in Pullman sleepers and
playing to audiences of all sorts. During the first years that he was in
America after the outbreak of war in Europe, he at least played the
music that he loved. But no one was ready for programs beginning with
Korngold and Cyril Scott and ending with Ravel and Scriabine and
Ornstein himself. So little by little Ornstein began adulterating his
programs, adding a popular piece here, another there. Recently, he has
been playing music into which he cannot put his heart at all, Liszt and
Rubinstein as well as Beethoven and Schumann. He has been performing it
none too brilliantly. Such an existence cannot but dull the man's edge.
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