John Ogdon: Views?

[Op. XXXIX]

I'm now very keen to hear his Busoni Concerto.

IMO, still unmatched. I've heard recordings by Donohoe, Lively, Mewton-Wood, Ohlsson, Kun Woo Paik and Hamelin, but none of them quite make it to Ogdon's level.

Brenda Lucas's book 'Virtuoso' is highly recommended, though occasionally makes for some uncomfortable reading.

[Roehre]

IMO, still unmatched.

Seconded - Ogdon's Busoni concerto is IMO still in a league on its own

[Barbirollians]

I have just started on the set to which Mandryka refers at its amazing £5.99 HMV price . The Tchaikovsky 1 with the Philharmonia and Barbirolli is dynamite !

[johnb]

Dammit, I am going to have to buy that set.

(By the way, I remember buying that Tchaikovsky 1 LP when I was in my late teens.)

[Mandryka]

Dammit, I am going to have to buy that set.

(By the way, I remember buying that Tchaikovsky 1 LP when I was in my late teens.)

I've found it to be quite addictive. Even starting to warm to JO's own compositions.

Slightly ot....but the booklet includes a delightful photo from a 1962 session, taken in the control room at Abbey Road: while JO, Ronald Kinloch Anderson and Victor Olof listen with interest to a playback, your attention is drawn to a very young man in a flannel jacket, whose mind appears to be elsewhere...it is Geoff Emerick, later to be engineer on the Beatles' most famous recording, just wishing 'the 60s' to start happening...

[johnb]

What are your thoughts on the Liszt Sonata?

[Mandryka]

What are your thoughts on the Liszt Sonata?

Other people have said it is the ultimate performance of this sonata....I've heard Argerich, Van Cliburn and Brendel, and I don't disagree.

[johnb]

Interesting.

I asked because I listened to it a few days ago (via Spotify) and was very impressed but I was talking to someone afterwards who said they didn't think JO understood the Liszt Sonata at all - which made me doubt my own judgement. (Not that I have any judgement worthy of the name!)

[amateur51]

Interesting.

I asked because I listened to it a few days ago (via Spotify) and was very impressed but I was talking to someone afterwards who said they didn't think JO understood the Liszt Sonata at all - which made me doubt my own judgement. (Not that I have any judgement worthy of the name!)

That's a handy conversation-stopper, isn't it johnb?

I wonder what is actually means?

[johnb]

I think it's shorthand for "I don't like his interpretation".

[Mandryka]

Interesting.

I asked because I listened to it a few days ago (via Spotify) and was very impressed but I was talking to someone afterwards who said they didn't think JO understood the Liszt Sonata at all - which made me doubt my own judgement. (Not that I have any judgement worthy of the name!)

It sounds like that person had a fixed view of what the sonata is 'about' and, like any 'work that endures', it will mean a multiplicity of things to different people. Did you ask your friend to explain what he meant?

Btw, that comment is usually made by people hearing Leonard Bernstein's later recording of the Pathetique for the first time.....but many (self included) have later decided that LB probably understood the work better than anyone else.

[Barbirollians]

I see from the Gramophone archive that Ogdon recorded Bartok 3 and Shostakovich with Sargent.

[amateur51]

I think it's shorthand for "I don't like his interpretation".

[Barbirollians]

The Rachmaninov 2 is very fine . The slow movement in particular where Ogdon's playing brings a wistful touching quality to the music rather than syrup and schmaltz.

[ahinton]

I've only just seen this thread.

That Ogdon was one of the finest pianist of his generation is, to my mind, beyond all doubt. His attitude to repertoire was a most catholic one, his sight-performing (i.e. on another level altogether from mere sight-reading) abilities were, I think, second to none and hius dynamic range was immense; I can't immediately think of any pianist capable of going way beyond an fff without sounding forced as he could; likewise, few could go below an accepted ppp and still play intelligibly, intelligently and without sacrificing any detail as he could.

His Busoni Concerto recording is indeed peerless - or would be were it not for the fact that quite a few subsequent recordings of the work, most notably Banfield, Ohlsson and, ost ecently, Hamelin, are belssed with considerably beter orchestral play8ing (and let's not forget that this score is teeming with orchestral subtlety and invention).

I worked with John Ogdon when he recorded Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum in the 1980s. It was a work that he'd lived with on and off since PMD gave him a score of it in the mid-1950s and urged him to learn it (PMD also orchestrated the first two of its 12 movements at around that time but no one seems to know what happend to this!). He gave a private performance of it in front of its dedicatee, the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, in the home of Scottish pianist and composer Ronald Stevenson, 29 years to the day after it had been premièred by Sorabji himself in Glasgow from the manuscript, the year before its publication. John described the work as one of about seven piano pieces that were essential to him and, from a pianist with so large a repertoire, that was quite a statement. I also attended both his London performances of it in 1988, the first at QEH (the work's complete London première) and the second at Skinners' Hall (Dowgate Street); the latter was given in memory of the composer who had died the previous month (October).

The historic Altarus première recording of John playing Opus Clavicembalisticum was issued in 1989, some seven months after the composer's death aged 96 and barely three months before Ogdon's own, aged just 52. It includes a massive book rather than the more usual booklet and its current pressing has been revised and is now on 5 CDs, though still for the price of 4; it's still available more than 22 years ater its initial release (catalogue no. AIR-CD-9075) and may be obtained via any good record retailer and may also be ordered via email (sorabji-archive@lineone.net) from The Sorabji Archive (see www.sorabji-archive.co.uk).

To date, five pianists have performed Opus Clavicembalisticum complete; besides the composer and John, the other three are still alive and are Geoffrey Douglas Madge, Daan Vandevalle and Jonathan Powell. Of all the performances that this work has received, none has been as textually accurate as those by Jonathan Powell, althoug it has to be said that he had a more accurate and reliable edited taxt from which to work. A new edition is currently in preparation and Jonathan plans to prepare, perform and record the work from that when it's ready.

In his last months, John had planned to learn Sorabji's 100 Transcendental Studies and had begun work on them. He also intended to prepare my own Piano Sonata No. 3 that I'd written for Yonty Solomon (another splendid pianist sadly also no longer with us) around a decade earlier; neither of these projects were to reach fruition.

The organist Kevin Bowyer considered John to be one of his great keyboard heroes (and still does to this day). Accordingly, following John's death, he prepared and gave a recital programme in John's memory, most of which he later recorded, also for Altarus, on the magnificent Harrison & Harrison instrument at the Church of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol (catalogue no. AIR-CD-9063, same availability sources as the Sorabji CDs); the works that he plays on this recording are Stevenson's Prelude and Fugue on a Theme of Liszt, my own Pansophiæ for John Ogdon (which Kevin commissioned) and the Middelschulte transcription of Busoni's Fantasia Contrappuntistica although in his origial recital programme also included the final incomplete Contrapunctus from Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge and the Fugue in A flat minor by Brahms. This 2-CD set is completed by recordings of John himself playing Busoni and Stevenson as well as his own Dance Suite.

Virtuoso? No names, no pack-drill, but I did once hear someone ruefully remark that it deserves a place on the bookshelves next to Testimony; as the late lamented Iain Richardson usd notoriously to say, "I couldn't possibly comment", except that, in this particular case, I could but had better not...