Jonathan Powell/Sorabji/Oxford

[french frank]

Someone will like this

[When]
Saturday, 2 November 2013
[Time]
14:30

[Description]
Jonathan Powell plays Sorabji's 6th Piano Symphony (1975-6), shortly after giving the world premiere in Holland (27 October).

Jacqueline Du Pre Music building, Oxford.

Any comments, ah?

[LeMartinPecheur]

Can we have a finishing time please, or at least an indication whether it runs into TTN?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Can we have a finishing time please, or at least an indication whether it runs into TTN?

Is it being BROADCAST?????!!!!! (The first glimmers of the dawn of a bright new day.)

[Beef Oven!]

Someone will like this

[When]
Saturday, 2 November 2013
[Time]
14:30

[Description]
Jonathan Powell plays Sorabji's 6th Piano Symphony (1975-6), shortly after giving the world premiere in Holland (27 October).

Jacqueline Du Pre Music building, Oxford.

Any comments, ah?

Comment: Was it written 1975-76 or is that it's duration?

[Flay]

Comment: Was it written 1975-76 or is that it's duration?

Spot on, Beefy!

http://www.sorabji-archive.co.uk/compositions/piece.php?pieceid=95

Approximate duration (minutes): 240
Manuscript pages: 270

[MrGongGong]

Spot on, Beefy!

http://www.sorabji-archive.co.uk/compositions/piece.php?pieceid=95

Approximate duration (minutes): 240
Manuscript pages: 270

About the same length as the gig I did yesterday then

BUT this

Dedicatee: Alistair Hinton

is most interesting .......

[Beef Oven!]

About the same length as the gig I did yesterday then

BUT this

Dedicatee: Alistair Hinton

is most interesting .......

Very interesting. I'm pretty sure I've seen a photo of Sorabji with ahinton in it, but hadn't realised he was a dedicatee of any of his works

Edit: The archive's got lots more information than I realised. But no forthcoming performance dates?

[LeMartinPecheur]

Is it being BROADCAST?????!!!!! (The first glimmers of the dawn of a bright new day.)

Very sorry if I raised your hopes fhg. I'd misunderstood the import of the OP. There was I thinking that an R3 link was inevitable on an R3 messageboard...<doh>

[ahinton]

Many thanks, FF, for drawing attention to this.

There are currently three performances of this work - the last of Sorabji's seven symphonies for piano solo (the first, dating from 1930-31, being designated as no. "0") - to take place very soon; the première takes place in De Toonzaal, s'Hertgogenbosch, Netherlands on 27 October and then the one that you mention is followed on 24 November by another hearing in New York (there may be others scheduled soon).

It was begun in 1975 and completed the following year. It includes a movement entitled "Quasi Alkan", which is especially appropriate for first hearing in the composer's hero's bicentenary year. I cannot be certain of the duratio of the entire work but I guess that it's something in the order of 4 - 4½ hours plus two intervals that Jonathan Powell will wisely take. It is Sorabji's final truly large-scale piano work.

Jonathan Powell's record in performing Sorabji's music is as unprecedented as it is remarkable; by the time that he has performed this symphony, he will have some 30 hours' worth of it under his quite astonishing fingers. He has recorded several CDs of Sorabji for the US Altarus label over the past decade or so and given a number of premières of this repertoire; the most ambitious of all of these projects to date being his account of Sequentia Cyclica super Dies Iræ ex Missa pro Defunctis in Clavicembali Usum, completed in 1949, generally known simply as Sequentia Cyclica and dedicated to the composer's great friend the pianist Egon Petri (Sorabji felt that this, along with his Gulistān of 1940 was one of his best piano works); it plays for an unbelievable 7+ hours that nevertheless goes by in no time at all.

Jonathan's wide-ranging repertoire also embraces Chopin and Finnissy, Granados and Ferneyhough, Albeniz and Xenakis, Alkan, Rachmaninov, Medtner, Godowsky, Busoni and Powell, along with some of my own work which he plays amazingly.

Anyway, I do hope that members here can get to the performance in Oxford, which I shall attend. Sadly, fhg and others interested, there are no broadcast plans for the symphony at this time.

Sorabji, who had vowed to give up composition in his late 70s, resumed in 1973 and continued thereafter to write prolifically for almost a decade and there's no evidence of a dimming of his imagination, verve, creative energy or anything else as he worked his way through his 80s.

Once again, FF - mille grazie for bringing this to the attention of the forum!

[Colonel Danby]

I'm a great fan of the works of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, and I will try to get over to Oxford for the concert as his music is not often performed as it ought to be. I do have but one CD in my collection of his, in which Michael Habermann plays the wonderful poem for piano 'Le Jardin Parfume', the Prelude, Interlude and Fugue, the Nocturne and a couple of pastiches based on works by Rimsky and Chopin (ASV CD AMM 159) probably long deleted. A great composer.

[ahinton]

I'm a great fan of the works of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, and I will try to get over to Oxford for the concert as his music is not often performed as it ought to be. I do have but one CD in my collection of his, in which Michael Habermann plays the wonderful poem for piano 'Le Jardin Parfume', the Prelude, Interlude and Fugue, the Nocturne and a couple of pastiches based on works by Rimsky and Chopin (ASV CD AMM 159) probably long deleted. A great composer.

That recording dates from 1988, the year of the composer's death and has indeed long since been deleted (and the material on it was in any case taken from earlier US recordings from 1980 and 1982 that were deleted even longer ago) but it's all been reissued again on the British Music Society label as part of a 3-CD compilation of everything by Sorabji that Habermann has ever recorded, the catalogue number is BMS427-9. The first of these US recordings was the first commercial recording of any of Sorabji's work but there have been some three dozen more since, a large proportion of which are still available even though some date back as far as the late 1980s; the artists involved include John Ogdon, Marc-André Hamelin, Carlo Grante, Yonty Solomon, Geoffrey Douglas Madge, Fredrik Ullén, Charles Hopkins, Ronald Stevenson, Donna Amato and Kevin Bowyer, as well as a brace of recordings by Jonathan Powell himself.

[teamsaint]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sorabji-Opus-clavicembalisticum-Kaikhosru-Shapurji/dp/B00002R2ZV/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1378797368&sr=8-5&keywords=sorabji

Looks good value as a download!

I can think of other works that could use this kind of marketing treatment.

[ahinton]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sorabji-Opus...ywords=sorabji

Looks good value as a download!

I can think of other works that could use this kind of marketing treatment.

It's hard to figure out why a recording of the complete Ring cycle is shown there among all the Sorabji recordings, though!

[Beef Oven!]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sorabji-Opus...ywords=sorabji

Looks good value as a download!

I can think of other works that could use this kind of marketing treatment.

That's the CD I've got. ahinton recommends the Ogden Above it. It's not the sort of thing I'd go in for, for multiple recordings though (rightly or wrongly).

[ahinton]

That's the CD I've got. ahinton recommends the Ogden Above it. It's not the sort of thing I'd go in for, for multiple recordings though (rightly or wrongly).

Ogdon, actually - and yes, I do indeed recommend it. One (or more!) of these fine days, Jonathan Powell will no doubt record it too.