Please read page 63 on "What I Listened to Today"

[Lance]

This is a post about Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum that a poster (and I would) like to pick your brains on ... people like my good friend Mark/diegobueno, or others who have a good feeling/understand about more recent musical works. Scroll down and you will seen the original post and a comment that I made. Any help on this will help us to appreciate this work by Sorabji. Some may already know the work as recorded by the late John Ogdon (4 CDs on the Altarus label) or Jeffrey Madge on the BIS label.

[diegobueno]

Hi Lance,

I'm flattered that you think I'll be able to unlock the mysteries of Sorabji for you. I don't think I can do that. My knowledge of Sorabji's music comes mainly from perusing his scores in the Cornell Music Library and thinking "Good Lord! That's a lot of notes! So many notes sounding all at once, it's like Max Reger on steroids! And here's a piece that's like that for 4 straight hours! And then I heard he'd written a 7 hour long symphony called the "Jami Symphony". Well, yes I imagine you'd have to be wearing your jammies while listening to it because it would put you to sleep.

So I haven't tried exploring Sorabji's works very much. Maybe I should. Maybe it will make me feel like the Emperor of Austria "Too many notes, Herr Sorabji!" I've just been listening to Eric Xi Xin Liang's performance of the first two movements and am thinking maybe I'll be able to get something out of it if I listen to it a few times, especially since it's synched with the score. I suspect the plain octaves that open the "Introito" are the key to the whole work, so you should familiarize yourself with that and learn to recognize this motive when it recurs throughout the cycle (I'm just assuming it does).

As the composer of a piano sonata which is itself monstrously difficult, I think about Sorabji and how people play this music not in spite of its difficulty but because of it. It's like Mount Everest; people climb it simply because it's there. Anna Kislitsyna, who recorded my sonata, told me she would never try to play my sonata in concert because she didn't have the stamina. I'm thinking anyone who has the stamina to play Opus Clavicembalisticum should have no problem with my sonata. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe I need to make it the first part of a long cycle of monstrously difficult piano sonatas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_UrsMxcEDs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TZ3u2rTtk0

[Rach3]

Maybe that's the problem. Maybe I need to make it the first part of a long cycle of monstrously difficult piano sonatas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_UrsMxcEDs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TZ3u2rTtk0

Are the other 2 movements at YT ? TIA.

[diegobueno]

Are the other 2 movements at YT ? TIA.

You can hear the whole thing here (tracks 10-13). I was just linking to the really difficult parts.

https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6367/

[Rach3]

You can hear the whole thing here (tracks 10-13). I was just linking to the really difficult parts.

https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6367/

Heard first time today, enjoyed more than any Sorabji I've heard, and will re-hear yours.

For the other CMGers here, a link to the Sonata is below, may have to scroll down a bit:

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=f_Urs ... P48vfO1p58