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Rachmaninov - Piano Works, John Ogdon

A tragic life receives a painful ‘tribute’

Gramophone review.

EMI’s three CD tribute to John Ogdon dates from 1988‚ the year before his untimely death and‚ to put it bluntly‚ should never have been issued. Ogdon’s instability at this tragic point in his life clouds virtually all these performances. A shadow of his former glory‚ his playing veers from the tired and dispirited to the wild and unfocused‚ from diffidence to chaos. Fraught in bravura (try the ultra demanding Preludes Nos 7‚ 8 and 9 from Op 23)‚ Ogdon is scarcely more comfortable in a relative oasis of calm (No 4) and‚ as Prelude follows Prelude‚ his struggle to maintain clarity and composure is almost palpable. Time and again‚ as Rachmaninov’s pianistic intricacy and emotional opulence heat and intensify‚ you are offered little beyond a vague approximation to the notes‚ and in‚ for example‚ the storm tossed F minor Prelude from Op 32 – only an incoherent uproar. There are intermittent shafts of light‚ though even in the E flat minor Etude tableau from Op 39‚ which Ogdon could once play with incomparable force and magnetism‚ he comes perilously close to the edge. The strain of trying to articulate the maelstrom of notes in the first of the C minor Etudes from Op 39 has him close to breaking point and‚ even more disappointingly‚ he remains oddly impervious to music of greater charm and intimacy (the G major and B major Preludes from Op 32 are very much the sort of works Ogdon‚ caught on one of his great days‚ could play with matchless delicacy and finesse). The two sonatas‚ which he recorded successfully for RCA earlier in his career (8/69)‚ are again hectic and hard pressed though nothing can erase one’s sense of Ogdon’s ferocity in the whirlwind commencing at 6'29" in the First Sonata’s first movement. More generally (further detail only makes for painful reading)‚ the legend and reality of Ogdon’s genius is sadly tarnished by this issue. Although EMI’s sound (deriving from unissued Collins Classics discs) is successful‚ it is marred by several editing slips (1'21" in the B flat Prelude from Op 23) and a five bar gap in the first of the Op 33 Etudes tableaux. Jeremy Nicholas’s warm hearted accompanying essay‚ perhaps understandably‚ evades the darker implications behind these performances and I wish someone had told him that the Second Sonata is played in the sadly truncated 1931 revision and not in the 1913 original as EMl claims.

Amazon review.......

These disks, recorded just before John Ogdon died suddenly, show a late 1980s side of his musical personality. If you cannot get hold of the concerto recording on Collins, and probably you can't as the company went kaput, thiese recording will be as late-Ogdon as you'll hear.

Some of the unbelievable technical facility of the 1960s and 70s has waned, but there is still much there in these recordings. Were you to hear these performances live you would be well satisfied on a technical level. The innate musical perception is still much in evidence, there is playing of great power and gentleness, and a great structural grasp of the music. Ogdon is, as always, a servant of the composer. Some of the playing is a mite abrupt, but it does reflect what the man was going through in the days following his mental health problems - but the music IS being played by this man and listeners who understand this gain in their appreciation of what is actually going on. I do not agree with the previous reviewer that these are a shameful exploitation of Ogdon's memory, they are recordings - very well sounding ones - of a man turned in on himself playing music by a man who also had an unfathomable inner life and was known for his perversity and miserable demeanour. Not for nothing was Rachmaninov known as "The Scowl"!

If you enjoy the musical struggles and triumphs of a late Callas recording, or Jon Vickers after about 1980 - both great musicians - you will enjoy these last musical thoughts of a wonderful musician. This is dangerous music-making, and we hear too little of that in our sanitised modern world. What do we think Beethoven sounded like when playing his piano? Would we like to hear him? Of course we would, so give this a try on those terms. If everything must be spick and span for you, choose Ashkenazy, who is a fabulous musician without the internal issues John Ogdon had. If you like a battle, a titanic inner struggle wrought out on the piano - buy these disks safely.

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Rating:
2.5 out of 5 by Book123