The Thirty Two Piano Sonatas

Daniel Barenboim, whom we have already met in these postings (see 28th.May 2007) comes to the end of a series of sell-out performances of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas in London’s Royal Festival Hall tomorrow evening. He is performing the cycle in several major European cities. When the Argentinian pianist was only an eleven year old, he was described by the great German conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler as a’ phenomenon’. His subsequent multi-talented career has more than justified that description. There are many websites detailing and applauding his achievements.

During his earlier years he was associated with a group of performers which included his late wife, the cellist Jacqueline du Pré, who died so tragically in 1987, as well as the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, and violinists Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman. He also accompanied Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in lieder recitals. His discography is huge with recordings of the great classical piano solo and concerto, operatic and orchestral works. Now known as much as an eminent conductor as a soloist, he is also honoured as an humanitarian who expresses a commitment to peace and reconciliation in practical rather than political ways, notably by his creation of the West- Eastern Davin Orchestra (see our blog 23rd.May.) In his fascinating 2007 BBC Reith lectures ‘In the Beginning was Sound’, he explored the significance of music as part of the human story.

Beethoven’s sonatas are regarded as the Everest that any considerable pianist is challenged to climb. The young British Pianist Paul Lewis has been touring the world giving performances of all the sonatas, and has recorded them on the Harmonia Mundi label. I am in process of collecting them and, as I compare them with recordings by another artist, am enormously impressed with his spontaneity but also his imagination and rythmic control. We shall be going to a recital by Lewis in April, and look forward to that.

Writing in today’s Guardian, Martin Kettle – who has been attending Barenboim’s concerts –refers to the sonatas as Beethoven’s ‘imperishable achievement’, and says that in them he went further towards expressing the human spirit in sound than anyone before or since. So hail Barenboim!, and the many artists who have recorded the sonatas (I have traced at least 25 currently available on CD’s). But most of all, hail that troubled, brilliant, adventurous genius, Beethoven himself!

B.R.

John Ogdon, Master Pianist (1937-1989)

Born in Nottinghamshire but educated at Manchester Grammar School, John Ogden was the greatest English pianist of his generation. He studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music in the illustrious company of the composers Harrison Birtwhistle, Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr and the conductor Elgar Howarth. Together they formed the New Music Manchester group to publicise and perform contemporary music. Later he studied with Denis Matthews and the legendry Myra Hess and Egon Petri. He had a fabulous technique and it was no surprise that that he won jointly with Vladimir Ashkenazy the Moscow International Tchaikovsky competition in 1962, having already won the Budapest Liszt Competition the previous year.

I saw him in performance only once when he was at the height of his powers, Massively talented he was physically massive too and I remember him crouched over the keyboard. The music critic Edward Greenfield said of him that there was no gentler giant in music. I have recently been given a new album of his recordings, including several of his own compositions which have never before been published. (EMI – 70th Anniversary edition).

He was never a well man but had a severe breakdown in 1973 which was never fully diagnosed but it may have been manic depression. For many years he was out of action but then began to play again in public. I taped two of his performances of the Rachmaninoff No.2 when he was on tour with I think the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, but whilst there was still the excitement of a dedicated performance, there were many anxious moments when he was clearly below form.

As well as a pianist he was also a composer of more than 200 works which include four operas, two large works for orchestra, songs, chamber music and of course compositions for the piano some of which are included in the discs I have referred to. They are all stored as an archive in the Royal Northern College of Music. He also made piano transcriptions of many works by other composers.

Widely respected as a kind and gentle man, his death was mourned by many. Together with friends and colleagues, his wife, the pianist Brenda Lucas Ogdon, established The John Ogdon Foundation in 1993 to ‘inspire and assist young musicians to develop in romantic piano and contemporary music, and to raise awareness of Ogdon as a composer’. Its Patron is Vladimir Ashkenazy. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies – creatively driven as was his onetime fellow student - says of John Ogdon that he was ‘a genius of enormous sensitivity and very great humour’.

It's a sad story, but a wonderful legacy.

B.R.