Achim Breiling ([log in to unmask]) wrote:

>Deryk Barker wrote:
>
>>Ogdon's recording was made in 1987-8 with the full consent of the composer.
>
>In the booklet of the new recording of the OC by Geoffrey D. Madge (which
>is quite good, IMHO) it is written that pianists had to visit Sorabji and
>play for him before they were allowed to perform his music in public - in
>the rare case of course that Sorabji liked their playing.  As the story
>goes Sorabji did not like Ogdons playing the first time Ogdon played for
>him (he said something like *Your playing tells me nothing, you can
>stop...*) - Ogdon then played Sorabjis works only in private performances.
>Is this true and why did Sorabji change his mind later?

I'd not heard this story before.  All I can tell you is that the booklet
in Ogdon's recording quotes a "hastilyi typewritten" letter from Sorabji
written in May 1985, to the producer of the recording:

    Dear Mr. Rice,
      Go straight ahead with the proposed recording of my Opus
      Clavicembalisticum. No objections at all.
          Yours sincerely,
            K.S. Sorabji

>By the way 2.5 hous for the OC seems to me impossible!

I know.

The pianist who cased the "ban" BTW was one Edward Clarke Ashworth who
played part I only in London in March 1936 but the "well meaning but sadly
ill-equipped pianist distended it to at least twice its proper length".

Deryk Barker
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