Day 96
Sorabji Opus Clavicembalisticum
John Ogdon
As part of this project I want to explore some of the more outré and buzzard repertoire - listening to music which otherwise I would never have had the inclination or time to discovery. And pieces don’t come much more outré than this.
I first came across Sorabji at university: I remember one of our lecturers being surprised to find that the term’s recital programme would include some of his music. Sorabji had banned public performances of his music decades earlier and had only just lifted it to allow Yonty Solomon to play some of the shorter pieces in concert.
Opus Clavicembalisticum is certainly not a short piece! This performance by John Ogdon lasts 4 hrs and 46 mins. I listened to the whole thing in one day - not all in one sitting I have to say but spread throughout the day. It is not an experience that I am likely to repeat. It was extremely hard work and offered very little reward for the investment of time. The music is vaguely tonal but with no real key centres and no rhythmic structure. The bar lines are just there to show the broad phrasing. The result is that there is no real sense of shape or structure to the music - it just meanders along seemingly aimlessly for minutes on end. In particularly the fugues just go on and on with no sense of direction. In all of the 4+ hours there were only a few moments when I really found something to enjoy - the only one which comes to mind is a few moments of psudo Spanish music about 3 hours in.
Was Sorabji a hidden genius or a Charlatan? It is difficult to say. Clearly there was a real music brain behind this music - to have devised all of those extraordinary piano textures shows that - but at the same could he seriously believe that a piece over 4 hours long was viable - and of course some of his other pieces - nearly all unperformed - are much longer. The image that came to mind was a virtuoso pianist lock in a darkened room all on his own getting gradually drunker and improvising to save his life with the hope of ultimately destroying the piano! Unfair perhaps but that’s what it felt like.
I don’t think that I will be going anywhere near Sorabji for a very long time.
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