Leo Ornstein - Nocturne and Dance of the Fates

- Composer: Leo Ornstein [born Lev Ornshteyn] (2 December 1893 -- 24 February 2002) 
- Orchestra: Louisville Symphony
- Conductor: Jorge Mester
- Year of recording: 1976

Nocturne (S821) and Dance of the Fates (S822), for orchestra, written in 1936-1937.

00:00 - Nocturne for Orchestra (S821)
12:47 - Dance of the Fates (S822)

2-piano transcription made by Christopher Kempf (you can reach him here: ballotatlas@gmail.com).

In 1936, the League of Composers commissioned his suite "Nocturne and Dance of the Fates" for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, it was also premiered by this orchestra in St. Louis under Vladimir Golschmann. This would be the last honor for Ornstein for some 40 years, as he and his music slipped into total obscurity, he did not compose for a long time after writing these pieces. The Ornsteins took up residence in a mobile home in Brownsville, TX. Throughout this period, Ornstein continued to compose, oblivious to changing trends in the concert world. 

Ornstein did start to write a symphony once but never pursued it. He felt that it was too easy to be seduced by the sonority of the orchestra — that the essential substance of most works could be expressed by the piano or a few instruments. He often said that much symphonic music was revealed as pretty empty shorn of the sonority of the orchestral setting and reduced to a piano transcription. These two orchestral pieces show that even though he was critical of orchestral forms, he was actually very good at writing for it: we hear great orchestral nuances that transcend the fantastic piano transcription by Christopher Kempf.