Geoffrey Douglas Madge - Kaikhosru Sorabji: Opus Clavicembalisticum (1983) Remastered 1999, 5CD Box Set

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Geoffrey Douglas Madge - Kaikhosru Sorabji: Opus Clavicembalisticum (1983) Remastered 1999, 5CD Box Set

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A work with a name like this can only be unusual. The opus in question is a three-part solo piano epic, lasting a shade under four hours and of a complexity to match. Combine an all-night raga sequence with Bach's Art of Fugue and you're getting close. Is it worth the listen? Yes, if you want to give your heart and mind–not just your brain–a real workout. For all his outsize demands, Sorabji was a front-rank pianist, who understood technique as a physical end to spiritual means. There are stretches of manic complexity here, but also passages of real poetry: try the lengthy "Interludium primum" which opens Part 2, or many of the 81(!) variations which follow the magisterial "Passacaglia" in Part 3. It's music which cries out for transcendental virtuosity, and Geoffrey Douglas Madge gives it just that. He gave four performances over six years and this Chicago one from 1983 assumed mythic status among those who heard it. Remastered for CD release, it is awe-inspiring in its grasp of what's gone into this music: the audience clearly living it with the pianist every step of the way. Hear it for yourself, then why not run the marathon or climb Everest for relaxation?

Review by Richard Whitehouse

Opus clavicembalisticum isn’t actually the longest piano work in existence – Sorabji wrote several longer, but so far they haven’t been performed or recorded. Only two pianists have essayed the complete OC (as it’s known in the trade) since the composer premiered it in 1930. Geoffrey Douglas Madge gave the second performance, at Utrecht in 1982, subsequently released on LPs of indifferent sound. John Ogdon’s 1988 South Bank performance was complemented by a studio-recorded CD release by Altarus. This ‘new’ recording is of a concert performance Madge gave in Chicago in 1983 – the US premiere – long admired by Sorabji purists as possibly the most faithful rendering the Brobdingnagian work has had. The sound is very good – clear and clean, with just a few creaks and virtually no audience noise. Madge too is a clear, clean and impressively accurate player of Sorabji’s mind-bogglingly involved polyphony. Ogdon took 50 minutes longer, although on four discs rather than five: Madge’s extra disc avoids splitting the Variations. Yet OC is one of those mysterious works that spurns clock time: it’s not really long – the mind adjusts to scale, as in Wagner and Bruckner. Some Sorabjians tend to shake their heads sadly over Ogdon’s performance, but I wouldn’t be without it: there’s a grandeur and wild daring about it, and a Romantic voluptuousness, that transcend its deficiencies and are the opposite of Madge’s approach (compare their readings of the short Toccata movement to see). Sorabjians should have both, of course: and if you want to hear a towering and still-enigmatic achievement of 20th-century piano literature, this BIS set is self-recommending.

Review by Calum MacDonald, BBC Music Magazine

Finally we have a great recording of this spellbinding piece back to the repertoire. Sorabji's heinously difficult music is well-nigh unperformable, distinctly due to the composer's attitude to society in general which created a series of complex and mammoth compositions that remain unrecorded. In fact this is a live relay of the 1983 concert which Madge gave in New York, certainly one of his best performances of Clavicembalisticum. I remember being enthused by the piece when I read an extensive article in IPQ about John Ogdon's studio recording for Chris Rice's obscure label Altarus.

There I thought that the writer exaggerated his claim on the importance of that flawed recording, indeed it is dismissed in the notes for this release as plainly flawed, apparently Ogdon takes over an hour longer than Madge, surely too much. Indeed Madge had me completely breathless with his amazing and incredible virtuosity in this, the sine qua non of all piano repertoire. Some parts such as the massive Passacaglia in the Fourth part are altogether too difficult for comprehension, indeed one wonders what Sorabji was thinking about when writing such complex notes in such a dissident manner. However there are rewards to be had in the Third Part where the sheer overwhelming force of the Theme and Variations carries all before it in technical accomplishment and unuldarated mastery.

The introductory essays accompanying the booklet espouse on the writing of overlong works which can be explained in shorter terms and occasionally I really felt that Sorabji overstates some of the fugal passages to an impossible extent. And I have to be honest, if there are any wrong notes in Madge's performance then I did not spot them! BIS's packaging is the usual excellence with notes by Sorabji experts together with a short introduction from Madge who deserves the highest posssible praise for his incredible playing. The recording is also quite outstanding with a crystal-clear piano and minimal audience noise except the deserving and excruciating applause that concludes what must have been a memorable event. Reading some of Sorabji's venomous writings puts Opus Clavicembalisticum more into perspective, a work of huge and daunting proportions but one with a deep personal message behind it. Now, what would Sorabji say of that? I shudder to think!

Review by Gerald Fenech, MusicWeb-International.com

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Geoffrey Douglas Madge - Kaikhosru Sorabji: Opus Clavicembalisticum (1983) Remastered 1999, 5CD Box Set

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Geoffrey Douglas Madge - Kaikhosru Sorabji: Opus Clavicembalisticum (1983) Remastered 1999, 5CD Box Set

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×

Geoffrey Douglas Madge - Kaikhosru Sorabji: Opus Clavicembalisticum (1983) Remastered 1999, 5CD Box Set

Close