Jonathan Powell/Sorabji/Oxford

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

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.

Indeed, it was as a composer that I first encountered JP - a String Quartet of his was "workshopped" by the Ardittis and Brian Ferneyhough at a HCMF some years ago. Most impressive.

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.

Sadly, I cannot be there. Even more sad that the Beeb cannot, either - even if the broadcast were to be part of Through the Night.

[Sir Velo]

Spot on, Beefy!

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

Approximate duration (minutes): 240
Manuscript pages: 270

A mere bagatelle for Messrs Dudley and Hinton...plenty of time for an encore or three.

[Roehre]

....Sadly, I cannot be there. Even more sad that the Beeb cannot, either - even if the broadcast were to be part of Through the Night.

Stupidly I cannot either, as October 27th I'm on the Ferry to the Netherlands (cannot change it to 26th ), and November 2nd I am in Germany

Is one of the Dutch broadcasters [if so, most likely VPRO or NOS] recording in 'sHertogenbosch?

[Bryn]

I intend to book a day or two of annual leave for the performance. An absolute must.

[ahinton]

A mere bagatelle for Messrs Dudley and Hinton...plenty of time for an encore or three.

Newver heard of one of those - but where does the one of whom I have heard come into the calculatons here, might I ask?

[Richard Barrett]

ahinton recommends the Ogden Above it.

So do I, for what it's worth. You might give Ogdon's recording a try if you want to hear a few more of the notes Sorabji wrote, which GDM doesn't seem to have been too bothered about. I don't think that really comes under the heading of "multiple recordings" to be honest.

[amateur51]

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.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sorabji-Lege...sim_sbs_m_h__1

[ahinton]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sorabji-Lege...sim_sbs_m_h__1

Many thanks for posting this and reminding me that I should mention that full Sorabji discography information will be found at http://www.sorabji-archive.co.uk/rec...iscography.php; almost all of these CDs remain available today.

[Beef Oven!]

So do I, for what it's worth. You might give Ogdon's recording a try if you want to hear a few more of the notes Sorabji wrote, which GDM doesn't seem to have been too bothered about. I don't think that really comes under the heading of "multiple recordings" to be honest.

One more recording wouldn't hurt, but I'm going to buy this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sorabji-Lege...ywords=Sorabji

I heard disc 2 a while back and I thought the music was orgasmic, if that's the term I want.

Also, I must say that I really enjoy the Geoffrey Douglas Madge.

[Nick Armstrong]

I'm going to buy this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sorabji-Lege...ywords=Sorabji

Helluva review on that page from a Mr Ferngrove...!

orgasmic, if that's the term I want.

Only you can say, Beefy...

[Beef Oven!]

Helluva review on that page from a Mr Ferngrove...!




Only you can say, Beefy...

Is that Mr Ferngrove known to us?

And regarding the other matter, I'm quite excitable.

[Nick Armstrong]

Is that Mr Ferngrove known to us?

And regarding the other matter, I'm quite excitable.

1) Not to me; perhaps to ahinton?

2) Good for you

[ahinton]

Helluva review on that page from a Mr Ferngrove...!

Yes, indeed - but also some interesting follow-up exchanges that broadly centre on the extent to which it might be appropriate to approach this music as though its lingua franca belongs to a the kind of "stream-of-consciousness" persuasion that is supposedly predicated upon there being no inherent sense of going from place to place in a narrative sense and indeed no need for such.

The Joyce and Proust comparisons were put into an interesting perspective by the principal respondent in terms of how they might be seen to stand up against the matter and manner of Sorabji's creative impulses and the results that they generated. Leaving on one side (for the sake of what we're looking at here) any arguments either way about multiplicities of layers of thought and a sense of direction in Joyce and Proust, what occurs to me is that Sorabji's major works in particular can and indeed do exist simultaneously on two levels - on the one hand the kind of thing that we might understand as befitting the description "stream-of-consciousness" and, on the other, a sense of there also being an innate necessity for forward propulsion, drama, lyricism, all imbued with a sense of very specific narrative direction and purpose.

The edges of "beginning, middle and end" might perhaps thereby seem to some - at least on first and immediately subsequent listenings - to be somewhat blurred as compared, say, to a Wagner musikdrama or a Bruckner or Mahler symphony, but not only might repeated listenings begin to point up the narrative journey as distinct from a sense of everything existing only in its own time, it's also the case that Sorabji's frequent recourse to fugue, most notably in Opus Clavicembalisticum (the only Sorabji work to contain four distinct examples), seems to suggest in itself that at least a part of what he's aiming for relates to more traditional notions of statement, development and conclusion.

OK, this two-layer thing arguably manifests itself more obviously in the big multi-movement works such as the fourth and fifth piano sonatas, the seven piano symphonies and the three organ symphonies and far less so in the stand-alone "tropical nocturne" type pieces such as Le Jardin Parfumé, Djami and Gulistān but, even then, that "tropical nocturne" genre is something to which Sorabji also had recourse in many of those multi-movement works in any case, notable examples (that have been recorded) being the middle movements of Piano Sonata No. 4, Concerto per Suonare da me Solo and Piano Symphony No. 5.

[ahinton]

[COLOR="#0000FF"]1) Not to me; perhaps to ahinton?

No, I don't know who he is (or at least I am not aware that I do!)...

[Padraig]

Someone will like this

Ah yes, ff.
But perhaps others as well!
Anyway, many thanks for drawing attention. I've had a good read - necessarily so.
The things one finds out!
All fascinating stuff.
Oxford is it?