The approaching centenary of Leonard Bernstein's birth has brought a spate of recordings of even his lesser-known music, a category that includes much of Bernstein's piano music. The listener has choices for the four sets of Anniversaries, short works written as portraits of and gifts for friends and family members of the composer, and other performances are available for the youthful Piano Sonata and the few other larger piano works in the Bernstein oeuvre. The selling point of this release by the young American pianist ...
Read More
The approaching centenary of Leonard Bernstein's birth has brought a spate of recordings of even his lesser-known music, a category that includes much of Bernstein's piano music. The listener has choices for the four sets of Anniversaries, short works written as portraits of and gifts for friends and family members of the composer, and other performances are available for the youthful Piano Sonata and the few other larger piano works in the Bernstein oeuvre. The selling point of this release by the young American pianist Leann Osterkamp is that the two-CD program truly does include all the known Bernstein piano works, including a few real obscurities. The booklet notes, by Osterkamp herself, are a bit involved, but they succeed in making a case beyond sheer completism for most of these. This is predominantly a question of connections between these mostly very short works and pieces by Bernstein in other genres. Sample the delightful Mixolydian Mixup, which, you will learn, was once used as part of the...
Read Less
