Bennett Lerner has found himself a niche in the regions of lesser-known America piano music. To judge from the greater part of the new record (Volume One was reviewed in August 1984) he is welcome to it.
Certainly William Schuman's Voyage, a cycle of five pieces and the most substantial work on the programme, is worth getting to know. The ideas have real penetration and achieve breadth without sagging. Also, the excerpts from Blitzstein's The Guests have a distinctive personality in their conscious popular/classical fusion. Blitzstein lets the music stop to think where it is going and he even manages an original angle on the waltz. The austerity of Ramey's Canzona also makes a fleeting impression.
But Lerner's attachment to the impersonal note-spinning of Paul Bowles is beyond my comprehension (Max Harrison was more taken with the Bowles pieces in Lerner's previous recital), and Roy Harris's American Ballads are hardly the best of him—a kind of pallid transatlantic Satie. Various juvenilia of Copland and Barber stand up well in this company, but that is about all, although the 19-year-old Copland's Sonnet II is a nice choice to follow the 14-year-old Barber's Love song—both pieces could have come from the same pen.
No shortage of interest value, then, but there is little to inspire Lerner to great heights. He plays admirably, but is rather distantly recorded and my pressing was not of the highest quality.'