Sorabji concerts

Dear New York area (and further away) friends and acquaintances.....
also composers, fractal musicians, algorithmic composers, Hovhaness
afficionados, ......................

I particularly recommend Jonathan Powell's performance of Sorabji's 4 1/2
hour piece Opus Clavicembalisticum, in NYC on June 20th.

This might well be a rare opportunity to hear this music, do be aware that
it is a very stirring, uplifting and magical piece...... not to be
encountered lightly.

Sorabji is a composer that I have featured in Planet Tree Music Festival (in
London), his work has a very substantial spiritual and artistic quality that
deserves much greater recognition.

See both concerts below.

very best wishes to all,

Lawrence

Sorabji Concerts in New York. In June, 2004, two concerts featuring major,
large-scale works of Sorabji will take place at Merkin Concert Hall in
Manhattan.

On June 20th at 4pm, Jonathan Powell will perform Sorabji's most famous
work, Opus Clavicembalisticum. In the past few years, Mr Powell has
established himself as one of the major champions of Sorabji's music. His
"First Sorabji Series" in London included a number of major works, including
the Concerto per Suonare da me Solo, the 4th Piano Sonata, "Villa Tasca",
"Passeggiata veneziana" and Toccata No. 1, all of which he has recorded for
Altarus Records. The first three CDs are available now, the next will be
released in mid-2004, and two more will follow later in 2004.

Opus Clavicembalisticum stands a little apart from the predominant trends of
Sorabji's compositional career, while including many of the forms and styles
that he particularly espoused (Passacaglia, Theme and Variations, Fugue). A
fugue sequence, admittedly indebted to the example of Busoni's great
Fantasia contrappuntistica, O.C. is tightly organised in a multiple-movement
structure of a kind not typical of Sorabji's large-scale works. A remarkable
feature of O.C., in common with the other extended works of Sorabji that
have so far been performed, is the degree to which it grips listeners,
whether they be newcomers to the composer's music or long time enthusiasts.
This despite its unusual timescale (for a solo piano work), of substantially
more than 4 hours. Apparently paradoxically, many listeners have commented
that the work seems dramatically compressed, and that the passage of time is
irrelevant.

Mr Powell performed Opus Clavicembalisticum in September at London's Purcell
Room, South Bank Centre, to a packed audience which afforded him an
enthusiastic standing ovation at the end. He has plans to perform it on a
number of occasions in the UK and USA in 2004 and 2005.

See concert flyer:
http://www.altarusrecords.com/ConcertflyersJune%2004.html

On June 17th at 8pm, Donna Amato will give the world première of Sorabji's
Piano Symphony No. 5. The shortest of his symphonies for solo piano, this
piece nevertheless weighs in at an impressive 2 hours or more. A major work
of Sorabji's later years (composed in 1973), the 5th Piano Symphony is
divided into movements which include many of the composer's trademark forms:
an extended 'tropical nocturne' slow movement, two fast toccata-like
movements, a fully worked fugue leading to an immense coda stretta (followed
by an unexpected epilogue which heightens the tension already established by
the fugue), all preceded by the familiar expository first movement in vastly
expanded sonata form which (as it turns out, now that the large-scale works
are beginning to become more familiar) is typical of Sorabji's symphonic and
sonata structures of his mature career.

Donna Amato has made a special study of Sorabji's music, and has performed
and recorded a number of world premières to great public and critical
acclaim. In March, 2003 she gave the world première of Sorabji's 5th Piano
Concerto, with the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ed
Spanjaard. The concert was broadcast on Netherlands Public Radio. Her
recording of shorter solo piano works of Sorabji (Altarus AIR-CD-9025) makes
an ideal introduction to the composer's music for listeners unfamiliar with
his highly individual style, and affords an opportunity to hear a selection
of his most accessible works, played with the requisite effortless
virtuosity. She has also recorded other works of Sorabji, Alistair Hinton,
Edward MacDowell, Ethelbert and Arthur Nevin and Ronald Stevenson (for
Altarus) and Dutilleux, Balakirev and MacDowell (for Olympia).

See concert flyer.

(for music techies:
Reinier Van Houdt in the Canadian new music mag "Musicworks" says the
following about Sorabji "Horizontal juxtapositions of 8 to 12 pitches may
span more than 3 octaves and often seem pasted together from fragments of
common scales. (Reiterated juxtapositions within an octave, suggestive of
common scales, rarely exist.) Busoni-like vertical juxtapositions of pitches
create open-ended branching chains of random inner harmonies, as though by a
process of fractal arborescence.)