[192.2] SORABJI RE-STRUNG

Steven Poole of The Guardian on elusive composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988): "Cut off from the world and supported by a private income, he composed dauntingly huge pieces which were regarded as all but unplayable. He forbade the performance of his music lest inferior musicians ruin it. He remained alone, despising the trivial productions of others, in his artistic castle of ideal, Platonic complexity, a lone voice in the wilderness until his death."

This week, at London's South Bank, pianist Jonathan Powell undertakes the Herculean labour of performing what many regard as Sorabji's masterpiece, the four-hour piano work 'Opus Clavicembalisticum' (1930), by some distance the longest piece in the piano repertoire. The concert takes place on Tuesday 16 September at the Purcell Room, 6pm.

"No genius has any right to lock up in one difficult and costly-accessible corner of the world, a work of supreme art, even his own. Great Art is universal. It should not be made the monopoly of a few." - Kaikhosru Sorabji, letter to Philip Heseltine, 1913.

Comment on this post: NewFrontEars