A limited number of Volumes 1–3 of Leo Ornstein's piano music, released by Toccata Classics, are now available in the OM webstore. The Russian-born American composer Leo Ornstein (1893-2002) lived long enough—an astonishing 109 years—to see his music both fall into and re-emerge from obscurity. With his earliest surviving work dating from around 1905 and his last from 1990, Ornstein's music naturally embraces a range of styles, extending on this second CD of his piano music from the Rachmaninov-like Suite Russe (1914) to the brittle but urgent Impressionism of A Morning in the Woods (1971). The meat of this disc is the extraordinary sequence of seventeen Waltzes Ornstein composed, largely in the 1960s and '70s, which vary from the sexily languorous to the boldly tempestuous, requiring the fearless virtuosity that Arsentiy Kharitonov brings to them here.

Arsentiy Kharitonov, piano

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Tracklist

Complete Waltzes, s400t16(1958tc.1980)
1. No. 1, S400
2. No. 2, S401
3. No. 3, S402
4. No. 4, S403
5. No. 5, S404
6. No. 6, S405
7. No. 7, S406
8. No. 8, S407
9. No. 9, S408 Moderato con moto
10. No. 10, S409
11. No. 11, S410 Vivo
12. No. 12, S411 Allegro
13. No. 13, S412 Moderato
14. No. 14, S413 Allegro non troppo
15. No. 15, S414 Allegro con moto ed bravura
16. No. 16, S415
17. No. 17, S416

Suite Russe, S58 (1914)
18. No. 1 Doumka (Andante espressivo)
19. No. 2 Extase (Allegro con eleganza)
20. No. 3 Barcarole (Andante sostenuto)
21. No. 4 MÈlancolie (Andante con moto)
22. No. 5 Danse Burlesque (Vivace)
23. No. 6 Berceuse (Andantino con semplice)
24. No. 7 Chanson PathÈtique (Allegro con forza)
25. A Morning in the Woods, S106 (1971)