Griffes died at 35, of pneumonia, in 1920 — and American music has never quite reckoned with the loss. He had already survived the provincialism of his Elmira, New York upbringing, the rigors of study in Berlin under Humperdinck, and the daily grind of teaching piano to schoolboys at the Hackley School in Tarrytown, where he composed in stolen hours. What he produced in those stolen hours was extraordinary: a body of piano music that absorbed the lessons of Debussy and Ravel without simply imitating them, and that pointed — in the Piano Sonata especially — toward a harder, more dissonant language he would never live to fully explore.
Garrick Ohlsson knows all of this. You can hear it.
The Three Tone-Pictures, op. 5, open this Hyperion recital with music of such transparent delicacy that the wrong kind of touch — too percussive, too deliberate — would shatter it instantly. Ohlsson’s pianissimos here are genuinely soft, not merely quiet; there’s a difference, and not every pianist understands it. “The Lake at Evening” breathes. The harmonic wash is cool and still, the pedaling calibrated so that colors blend without muddying, and Ohlsson brings to “The Vale of Dreams” a kind of suspended inwardness — the music seems to hover just above the keys. Then “The Night Winds” arrives, presto fuggevole, and Ohlsson unleashes it with a whirling, barely contained ferocity that makes clear he’s been holding something in reserve.
The Fantasy Pieces, op. 6, are a step deeper into the composer’s imagination. The “Barcarolle” isn’t Offenbach’s Venice — it’s Griffes’s, more ambiguous, the rocking rhythm slightly tilted, the harmonic language slipping in and out of focus. Ohlsson’s rhythmic suppleness here is remarkable; the pulse flexes and recovers like something organic. And the “Notturno” — this is where the recital earns its keep. Six and a half minutes of music in which almost nothing happens, and everything does. Ohlsson sustains a seamless melodic line over a slowly shifting harmonic landscape, building to climaxes that feel genuinely inevitable rather than merely loud. The “Scherzo” that closes the set has a scampering, fantastic quality — Griffes at his most Ravelian, though never slavishly so.
Roman Sketches, op. 7, is Griffes’s most popular set, and “The White Peacock” its most famous piece — familiar enough to be a trap. The marking is languidamente e molto rubato, and pianists who take the rubato too literally end up with something boneless. Ohlsson keeps the structure intact while allowing the surface to shimmer and dissolve; the result is languorous without being slack. “Nightfall” is more searching, its lento misterioso marking exactly right — this is music that doesn’t quite resolve, that ends in a kind of questioning stillness. “Clouds” closes the set with a tranquility that feels earned rather than merely imposed.
The Piano Sonata is the hard case. Composed in 1917–1918, it’s the piece in which Griffes most visibly strains against the impressionist vocabulary he’d mastered — reaching toward Scriabin, toward something more angular and driven. It remains a somewhat uneven work; the first movement’s accumulated tension doesn’t always discharge convincingly, and the finale can seem to spin its wheels before finding its destination. Ohlsson understands the piece’s ambitions and plays it with great power and commitment. Whether he fully solves its structural problems is another question. I’m not sure anyone has.
De profundis and A Winter Landscape are less frequently programmed, and Ohlsson gives them the same serious attention he brings to everything here. De profundis is austere, genuinely mournful — Griffes in a confessional mood. The Three Preludes of 1919, among his last completed works, are the pieces that most clearly point toward where he might have gone. Ohlsson plays them with an understanding of their transitional character, their reaching quality.
Michael Lewin has recorded this repertoire twice for Naxos, and his playing has real virtues — a diamond-like clarity of articulation, clean fingerwork, genuine musicianship. But beside Ohlsson, Lewin’s readings can feel like accomplished renditions of notes on a page rather than fully inhabited performances. The Hyperion sound is also in another league: warmly present, with an exceptional rendering of dynamic gradation and natural decay. It rewards close listening on good equipment.
Griffes deserved better from posterity than he’s received. This disc is a strong argument for a serious reassessment.
