Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Opus Clavicembalisticum - what do you think of this piece?

Hello everyone
When looking through Hungarian Rhapsody performances on Youtube I came across this piece - which is branded as possibly one of the most difficult Piano Solo's ever written. I listened to it and had to turn it off within 10 seconds... it was one of (if not the) MOST awful Piano pieces I've ever heard. What are your opinions of the piece? Have you ever played it? No disrespect to anyone who likes Clavicembalisticum/Sorabji - it just really wasn't my taste.

I had the chance to ask Marc-Andre Hamelin about this when he visited Oberlin. He basically said life was too short to bother with music like that.

I agree; I found it unlistenable.

I'm not exactly enthused by this piece.

I see that the YouTube clips are dominated by John Ogdon. He was a phenomenal pianist (and 'phenomenal' isn't an adjective I use very often). He had a fantastic technique and astounding sight reading skills.

Sadly, relatively early in his professional career he suffered a mental breakdown, probably at least in part due to the pressures he allowed himself to be put under. After that he never really recovered the same standard on the piano. Often his later performances and recordings were scrappy and wilful but enlightened by flashes of brilliance and insight. It is so sad - I know people who treasure the memories of being present at some of his earlier concerts.

By all accounts he was a very gentle and unassuming man.

Tragic.

I believe the OC was Ogdon's final recording. I've never listened to it all the way through, but Sorabji's sound world has a certain fascination for me. Ultimately, though, I would have to agree with Hamelin: life is too short.

Ogdon is a pianist I very much admire. His recording of the Busoni Concerto is, IMO, still unsurpassed (I've heard them all!), and I have a Liszt recital on Testament which contains the most bone-chillingly cathartic Funerailles one could ever imagine.

But Odgon could be erratic. I never much fancied his Scriabin, and his pioneering recording of the Alkan Concerto has some disconcertingly slipshod moments in the last movement.

Do you study at Oberlin? I was last there to hear Angela Hewitt at Finney Chapel with the complete WTC on two separate days. One of my best friends (and sometimes chamber partner...cello), who's now with the Camerata Koln, studied there years ago.

I think it's a pretty cool piece, but I've never listened to all of it. It is nice in sections though

I went to Oberlin 8 years ago before transferring to a state college in California for money reasons. While I was there I also saw Yefim Bronfman play the Bartok 2nd Concerto at the Finney Chapel. He signed my copy of the score.

It's a great school eh? Isn't it crazy how it's basically in the middle of nowhere? LOL. I've heard Bronfman each of the last two seasons. Once with Rach 3 (which was incredible) and once with Manny Ax (who I'm going to hear tomorrow night). Like you, I added his autograph to my growing collection.

There are some nice sections in the piece (I of course haven't heard the whole thing though), and it's very interesting contrapuntally, but overall I'm not impressed with it.

a monsterous vanity - not a trace of humour in it anywhere and mind numbingly cerebral. I heard Ogdon play it live (God I must have been short of something better to do) at the Queen Elizabeth Hall; by the end of the first interval one third of the small audience had left, by the second two thirds had vanished into the night air leaving a number of masochists (myself included)to see it through. As for Ogdon - unbelievable; in the artists room afterwards Felix Aprahamian (noted writer and critic)tearfully congratulated Ogdon who promptly offered to go back on stage and play it again..............

I love it! In fact, I flew from CA to NY just to attend Jonathan Powell's performance of it! (Also to hear Donna Amato play the 5th Piano Symphony). Imagine--two major Sorabji concerts in one week in the same town--what are the odds of that?? Anyway, listening to someone play "OC" on a recording is one thing--watching them negotiate such musical density for four hours is quite another! It was absolutely staggering...in a good sense. Mr. Hamelin was also in attendance.

I think this is wonderful music. I've become enchanted by various random 5-10 minute excerpts I've listened to. But I don't think I have the stamina, or the time, to get to know the 4 hour whole.

To anyone who has, like Fugue14, you have my respect!

By the way, when Marc-Andre Hamelin says "life is too short to bother with music like that", I'm pretty sure he's doesn't mean the music is awful or unlistenable to. He's recorded works by Sorabji before. I bet he thinks it's great music, but life's too short to work up a 4 hour piece. Too many other good things to play.


-Jason

By the way, for whatever it's worth-- I've really been exploring and digging Sorabji these last few days. I was a little skeptical of the gimmicky aspect of a four hour composition. But he wrote many other pieces for piano-- including a set of 100 Transcendental Etudes, in the process of being recorded by Fredrik Ullen.

Take a listen to these. I think this is incredible music!

#7:



#18:
[video:youtube] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwIB6p5c0ew[/video]


-Jason

I love #10. I think of Chopin's Op 10 No 1 all the way.

I can't say much on OC, as I have never explored it. I do think it's a piece that can't fairly be approached "blindly" however, but only with a firm understanding of what it is. I think Bach's Art of Fugue and Busoni's Fantasia contrappuntistica would be useful pre-requisites.

Daniel

I think it's terrible.

I suppose that this was why he took the time and trouble to travel from Philadelphia to listen to Jonathan Powell play the entire work in New York in 2004 (he ws far from unimpressed, too).

It's interesting music from a theoretical exercise, I suppose, but it's one of those pieces that are basically unlistenable. These types of pieces brought classical music's evolution to a screeching halt after it realized it had taken the wrong turn at Albequrqe, and it's still recovering - in my opinion. If the composer's goal is to alienate it's audience, then I think it has succeeded.

Some of the etudes sounded interesting, and not too bad, but as ETUDES - knowing they are technical exercises. I would never class them with the etudes of Chopin, for example, which are enjoyable to listen to besides having a teaching quality.

The difficulty of the piece could easily be beaten by anyone with a will to slap a million-or-more well-placed and well-thought-out notes. Doesn't mean anyone would ever want to listen to those notes, but they sure would be some smart notes and certain critics would coo and caw over them. Thankfully, anti-serialistic, anti-atonal, anti-i-ching-chosen critics have played their part wonderfully with pieces such as this and much of this stle still languishes in theory-land.

And no - I don't think that in a hundred years it will be loved and adored, and people will say "oh the people in sorabji's time weren't ready" - too bad I won't be around to see if I'm wrong or not.

Frankly, the biggest issue is probably: Is the composer worth kowing?. It reminds me of all the performance art that is so self-indulgently obscure as to make one think: WHY would I bother delving into this work? Why would I spend the time analyzing, learning, playing this piece? To feel what the composer does? To see what he has to say? WHY would I care what a person like this has to say? It's quite possible that in the end, after all the sweat, tears and work - the composer's message, intentions, whatever, etc are not worth the time of day. We choose Mozart over Clementi for a reason (I know a few will throw clementi-eggs at me for that, that's okay - I actually LOVE a lot of Clementi - it was just an example), Chopin over some his schmaltzy made-to-order-salon-pieces peers.

I think that may be what Hamelin meant, not that his opinion sets a standard or anything (Same goes for mine): the amount of time needed to play and understand this piece might just end up being a huge waste of time.

I think the above post needs a very large "in my opinion" attached to it, for I disagree with almost all of it! Personally, Sorabji has been a recent revelation. To each his own.

Let me at least shine a light on the Hamelin quip about OC. You have to understand the context: Hamelin loves Sorabji! He's performed many of his works (one of his bio pages says: "Marc-André Hamelin may be regarded as having taken Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji as one of his principal repertoire guides"). Even more a labor of love, Hamelin edited and painstakingly wrote out by hand an edition of Sorabji's first 18 Transcendental Etudes, back in the day when the only access to this music was through Sorabji's original, monstrous, unreadable scores.

Sorabji has played a major role in Hamelin's life. If he jokes that life is too short to master and work out every nuance from a four hour piece, it's not because he finds its composer a "huge waste of time."

-Jason

p.s. As I've said before on this forum, it's interesting how much more I get out of hearing people talk about what they like than what they dislike. It makes sense: people tend to have knowledge only of the things they like. I do the same thing here myself.

I understand your point, but I wouldn't assume that to always be the case. In my late teens I went through a HUGE Mahler phase. I purchased all the scores (not IMSLP downloads), listened to and collected numerous recordings of the symphonies and lieder, read various bios and studies, and tried to attend as many live concerts as possible within my budget and traveling abilities.

Now almost 10 years later, I don't understand what the fuss, tears and hero worship were about. Mahler says less and less to me with every passing year, and with the exception of a few works (Das Lied, 3rd Symphony, the middle movements of the 7th Symphony), I find Mahler's self-absorption and neurotic temper tantrums simply past-bearing.

I realize this will ruffle some feathers, but the point is that my dislike of Mahler is not based on ignorance of the man and his music. Cheers...

Interesting! Your case (of disliking a composer you know well) is very much the exception. Even though Mahler is my single favorite composer, hearing you describe him as self-absorbed doesn't bother me at all, as it's done from a position of knowledge.

In fact, I'm curious to hear more! Why do you still like the 3rd; isn't its first movement as bombastic as anything he wrote? Are you really able to resist the lyrical theme of the first movement of the second; the excitement of the last movement of the fifth; the entire last movement of the ninth?

I'm a little similar to you, actually-- I also went through a huge Mahler phase a long time ago, then took a break. I was almost reluctant to return, because I feared it would all look like self-absorbed juvenalia. In my case though, the wonder and the excitement were all still there.

-Jason

I am waiting for the condensed version.

I second what beet31425 said. It does strike me as odd that you still like the 3rd when its attempt to capture the entire world in one piece is surely as 'self-absorbed' as anything else he wrote. Also, just out of interest, do you still rate Mahler highly on a purely musical basis? Isn't, for example, the Rondo-Burleske of the Ninth a demonstration of great mastery of counterpoint?

The Emperor's wardrobe malfunction?

Therein lies the problem my good mate. I rate Mahler extremely highly on a musical basis. If there is a greater, more creative and imaginative orchestrator, I'd like to know who! And yes, the Rondo-Burleske of the 9th is an impressive piece of work.

Thanks Jason and FunkyLlama for your replies. I can't say I really have it all sorted out...

Haha, since I'm currently having a huge late-teen Mahler phase as you did I suspect I may in a decade's time have the same viewpoint as you. To be honest I've always thought there perhaps is something fundamentally adolescent about Mahler - the existentialism, the emotional extremes, the sudden changes of mood...

Opus Clavicembalisticum.... I got the scores for this along with the Symphonic Variations (which is about twice as long at 484 pages) through interlibrary loan while at university. I flipped through the OP and remember getting an impression something like - "5 staves.... 2 hands..... wtf?!". I kept the scores for awhile and listened to bits of OC via Naxos (John Ogdon primarily - there are only a handful of recordings of this work). I don't believe I was able to find recordings of the Symphonic Variations for piano (at least not in full). Eventually I came to much the same conclusion as the one that can be drawn from Hamelin's quote. I do think they are pretty neat pieces and I will probably in the future work on some of his shorter works (and by that I mean under 10 minutes, lol). If memory serves me correctly, I do not recall anything atonal or serialistic in this composers compositional style. It is all definitely influenced by Baroque styles/forms and definitely by Busoni. Sure it is dense and doesn't sound traditionally tonal but there is definitely tonality here.

There already is an "in my opinion" in the post several times.
Even if there wasn't - it's an online forum, where almost every single post is an opinion. I feel ridiculous every time I write "in my opinion" - of COURSE it's an opinion! I suppose I could say the same thing about your claim about the piece in question being a good piece - you should have a big "opinion" label on it heh heh. But I won't - I already know that.

As for your statement that people only have knowledge of things they like - you don't really mean that, do you? I mean, there's plenty of things in life that people know, which they don't necesarrily like. To say that "oh, he doesn't like Mozart - he must be ignorant and know nothing about him" or something similar is just a little bit ignorant. Like another poster said about Mahler, same idea.

But like I said in my post, in this case I don't know that much about Sorabjin, and have no desire to learn more, and I already gave the reasons for it - he appears to be one of those composers that can offer nothing beyond novelty and complexity. I wouldn't be surprised if most people agreed with that, as is evident from the amount of people in this thread who do not like it.

Just wanted to clear that up. My...opinion.

I think with that one sentence you've proven your point. LOL

Whoosh!
If only I was making just one point, and if only I hadn't already addressed your statement before you even made it...as usual, picking one tiny statement and running with it - who knows where? Try reading the post you're quoting again, instead of taking sentences out of context.

Doesn't matter. I've said my opinion about the work, I'm not going to spend the rest of my time defending my words - not interested. The majority of the music world has moved past Sorabjin, and so have I.

my teacher was one of the first to play it, with Zustimmung by the Master, I turned pages (after pages after pages...)for him in concerts, I know the piece, and although it's a terrific feat for the pianist when he/she can play it to the end, I can't say I like the music, it's wanting ten humble fingers do more then actually possible, frankly it all sounds quite horribly, like Scriabin in a fit, or Reger eally trying his best, or just me, drunk that is....

I think you entirely missed my point. =)

Just like the game. If you think about the game, you lose.

Dang! I lost the game!