That Künstlerleben arrangement is certainly food for thought. I must have a look at the whole piece some time. Ian, you don't really play that kind of thing much (if at all), do you?

For me Ravel is very difficult. Most Ravel is so hard pianistically and musically. Godovsky is notoriously difficult.
In that Ravel I like your arrows Ian. I think they are for slow practise. I did not play this piece, but may be in fast tempo the upper arm has to unite the whole thing. May be it is good to practise throw of the arm (door closes on one and opens on two) or even fewer time if the tempo is fast.

They say that Liszt understood that he was exesive and one doesnot have to have such difficulty for the effect desired. Sometimes easier version are less clamsy and better.
For lesser pianists the saying is good: the smart one will not climb up the hill, he will go around it. (it is not about me, because I am the one that will bit the head against unsurmountable difficulty instead of walking around).

...and said so innocently, too     

Well, I've been listening carefully through to the Sorabji Études transcendentales 1-25 this evening, thought I should give them another try. But if anything my opinion is even more negative. Very occasionally Sorabji can capture some sort of emotion that isn't just an empty affected mannerism - Le Jardin Parfumé and In the Hothouse touch upon this. But there's almost nothing at all like that in these pieces. He has no harmonic technique whatsoever, so that the odd luxurious chord, for example (as might be found on the odd beat of Nos. 3 & 4), is just lost in the general undifferentiated haze. No sense of context, everything sounds anonymous. He comes up with a vaguely novel figuration (for example No. 17 which I heard the first bar and thought might have something) at the beginning of some pieces and then has no idea what to do with it. No dramatic sense; even in those like No. 10 that have a vague sense of drama, that is only achieved by the most pedestrian types of accumulation. Whether it's simple emotional vacuity and immaturity, or simple incompetence, I don't know; probably a combination of both, but the former of those things (expressed in different language) would probably have been a virtue to Sorabji, he might think it most 'aristocratic' or the like. There is the vaguest semblance of some content in Nos. 14 and 24, but it is so unfocused as to be minimal. Most of the pieces are just ramblings, portentuous and empty. Banal male turkey-cocking (thoroughly eliminating any such feminine qualities as feeling) in place of any substance; Meccano set music. What does anyone else hear in this that am I missing?

I would compare them with other composers' Études, such as those of Chopin, Liszt, Alkan, Debussy, Prokofiev, Bartók. In all of these cases the pieces are frequently based around a single figuration, but they manage to create so much out of that. Chopin uses extravagant but highly focused and tightly controlled harmonic processes to create a myriad of different moods in short pieces - just a few notes in his work have far more meaning and expression than vast swathes of Sorabji; Liszt creates highly evocative miniature tone-poems; Alkan brings a certain wry charm and sometimes a Berlioz-like sense of drama and the macabre; Debussy can capture exuberance and deep regret simultaneously, and much else; Prokofiev communicates a sense of the grotesque that can be genuinely unnerving but in a dialogue with a heartfelt sensibility; Bartók has a fervent passion and luminosity. These are highly generalised descriptions, of course, all of their pieces do far more than can be done justice to in words. I don't feel Sorabji comes anywhere remotely close.

Was listening to Offenbach earlier, will return to that - find an awful lot more content there.

If you've read other views of mine on Sorabji, you would know that I certainly would have believed that.


For those who are wondering what this is about - http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio3/F6643900?thread=4031843 . I'm really shocked that practically no other posters seem to see why this would be an issue.

        ///////////////////<<<<<<<<<<<<Can you explain what you mean by "spidery", Ian Pace?

Fredrik Ullén has released a CD of the first 25, and the next two discs in the series are already recorded and awaiting release (the studies tend to get longer as the series proceeds). The disc Ian refers to is actually the one which ignited my interest in Sorabji's music in the first place, having previously known very little about it... which just goes to show how different listeners' reactions can be.