Performances
There have only been a handful of performances of Opus clavicembalisticum.
The first was by Sorabji himself on December 1st 1930, in Glasgow, under the auspices of "The Active Society for the Propagation of Contemporary Music".
Pars prima was performed by John Tobin in 1936; this performance is noted to have taken approximately twice as long to perform as the score dictates. This performance, and its reception, led to Sorabji's ban on public performances of his works, claiming that, "no performance at all is vastly preferable to an obscene travesty". Sorabji maintained this ban until 1976.
The next public performance of Opus clavicembalisticum took place in 1982, at the hands of the Australian pianist Geoffrey Douglas Madge. A recording of the performance was released on a set of four LPs, which are now out of print. Madge went on to perform it in its entirety on five other occasions, including once in 1983, a recording of which was released by BIS in 1999. This particular release is notable for its numerous technical flaws related mostly to pitch and rhythm. During several passages, entire measures of music are omitted or exchanged.
John Ogdon performed the work twice, towards the end of his life, and produced a studio recording of the work. Jonathan Powell has performed it on five occasions.
The only other verifiable and complete performance of this work, in public, was given by Daan Vandewalle, although a number of pianists have performed excerpts, which are usually the first two movements. For example, J. J. Schmid performed part of the work at the Biennale Bern 03 and Alexander Amatosi performed the first movement at the University of Durham School of Music in 2001.
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Famous quotes containing the word performances:
“This play holds the season’s record [for early closing], thus far, with a run of four evening performances and one matinee. By an odd coincidence it ran just five performances too many.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
“At one of the later performances you asked why they called it a “miracle,”
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—John Ashbery (b. 1927)