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3 stars
George Antheil was the ultimate self-promoter, even planning to stage his own death (eaten by lions!) to garner publicity for a new composition. He called himself music’s “bad boy,” though he was but one of many in 1920s ultramodernist circles, and he was a consummate copycat: Satie, Bartok, Stravinsky, Ives, Cowell, Tin Pan Alley and even Prokofiev and Shostakovich (in a neo-conservative turn in the 1940s) show up here like quick stops on an express train. Strong performances from Mark Fewer and John Novacek encourage us to take Antheil’s self-conscious novelty, nose-thumbing irony, virtuosic effects and whimsy more seriously than we might. Fewer is also the first to record Antheil’s (unfinished) solo violin sonata, which lay forgotten in the papers of its dedicatee, violinist (and Ezra Pound’s mistress) Olga Rudge.
Elissa Poole

George Antheil: Sonatas for Violin and Piano Mark Fewer, violin; John Novacek, piano (Azica)