Leroy Anderson is generally associated with short, light music for orchestra, music whose mood is almost invariably joyous or festive and sometimes both. But he did write a few serious pieces, including his Concerto in C for piano and orchestra and A Suite of Carols. Some would add to that short list this brief work, Forgotten Dreams. Yet, while it is melancholy and slowly paced—Mitchell Parish wrote lyrics for it, making it a quite sad song of lost love—it does not remotely exhibit the sense of angst one finds in the darker works of many Classical composers. The main theme is sentimental and sweet, its notes seeming to slowly and gently unravel in a pattern dominated by a four-note motif, a motif that clearly expresses a sense of both consolation and loss. The piano introduces the melody in single notes and it is then taken up by the strings. In the middle section, the music briefly brightens, but cannot shrug the melancholy mood. The main theme is reprised first by the strings and then by the piano, with the work quietly and sadly ending.

© Robert Cummings, Rovi