Scintillating pianism in music from Mozart to Messiaen: the complete Argo and Decca recordings of John Ogdon.
John Ogdon began to study at the Royal Northern College of Music in 1953, at the age of 16. Fellow students such as Alexander Goehr and Harrison Birtwistle were astonished by the speed of Ogdon’s mind, matched by his facility at the keyboard. He could perform and make sense of the most complex scores, old and new, as though they were child’s play. Further study elsewhere led to his triumph at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition in 1962, when he shared the gold medal with Vladimir Ashkenazy.
He began to record for Decca six years later, in December 1968, with the piano cycle by Olivier Messiaen, Vingt Regards sur l’enfant-Jesus, which renewed the Lisztian tradition of pianism for a new postwar age. Over the next three years he made four further albums for Decca, three of them with his wife Brenda Lucas. The diversity of repertoire testifies to the range of Ogdon’s musical talent and intellectual curiosity. More elevated but virtuosic Messiaen (the Visions de l’Amen) sits alongside freewheeling youthful concertos by Mendelssohn and Shostakovich.
Almost unknown at the time that Ogdon and Lucas recorded it for Argo in 1972, the Concerto pathétique is a two-piano version, made by Liszt in 1856, of a piece which had begun life as a Grand Solo de concert in 1849. Latterly taken up by the likes of Martha Argerich, the Concerto presents a heroic contrast on record with the restraint of the Six Canons and the poetic Andante and Variations by Schumann.
Ogdon’s career, both in public and on record, was brought to a sudden and tragic halt by a breakdown in 1973. Struggling with mental health for the rest of his life, he nonetheless returned to the studios briefly in June 1983, to contribute to a Decca set of Mozart’s complete music for solo horn, led by Barry Tuckwell. In 1784, Mozart wrote to his father Leopold that the Quintet for Piano and Winds was ‘the best thing I have yet written’; Ogdon, Tuckwell and their distinguished colleagues lean into its mellow warmth while relishing the interplay of texture in Decca’s demonstration-quality sound.
This ‘Original Covers’ Eloquence box of Ogdon’s Decca and Argo albums valuably restores the Mozart Quintet (and several other recordings) to the catalogue, accompanied by a new and illuminating essay on the pianist’s life and career by Mark Ainley.
CD 1
MENDELSSOHN Concerto in E major for Two Pianos
Concerto in A minor for Piano and Strings
Brenda Lucas; Neville Marriner
MOZART Quintet for Piano and Winds
Derek Wickens; Robert Hill; Martin Gatt
Barry Tuckwell
CD 2
LISZT Concerto pathétique
SCHUMANN Andante and Variations, Op. 46*
SCHUMANN Six Studies in canonic form (transc. Debussy)*
Brenda Lucas
*FIRST RELEASE ON CD
CD 3
STRAVINSKY Capriccio
SHOSTAKOVICH Piano Concerto No. 1
John Wilbraham; Neville Marriner
CDs 4–5
MESSIAEN Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus
CD 6
MESSIAEN Visions de l’Amen
Brenda Lucas
‘This is indeed, a great performance, of the kind seldom recorded.’ Records & Recording, October 1969 (Messiaen: Vingt Regards)
‘Splendid commitment and a masterly range of colour and dynamics.’ Gramophone, October 1969 (Messiaen: Vingt Regards)
‘I cannot imagine them better played… This is an utter charmer of a record.’ Gramophone, January 1970 (Mendelssohn)
‘The performances give unalloyed pleasure and the recordings are splendidly fresh and alive.’ Gramophone, May 1970 (Mendelssohn)
‘I continue to enjoy Ogdon’s performance very much, in particular for its huge range of colour and dynamics, and for its splendid grasp of the way the music works.’ Gramophone, November 1970 (Messiaen: Vingt Regards)
‘Ogdon’s approach seems exactly right. He plays the work lightly with strong sympathetic phrasing and a nice sense of colour and nuance, but he makes no effort to inflate this music beyond its proper scale.’ High Fidelity, November 1970 (Mendelssohn)
‘The Ogdon team play it magnificently, making light of its difficulties of text and ensemble.’ Gramophone, November 1971 (Messiaen: Visions de l’Amen)
‘Stylish performances, well recorded, of two works which make an unexpected but attractive coupling … Ogdon plays most compellingly.’ Gramophone, February 1972 (Shostakovich/Stravinsky)
‘There is both precise ensemble work and some brilliant solo playing … the phrasing and balance (the latter beautifully captured by the engineers) attained by Marriner make you hear these two works as you’ve never heard them before.’ High Fidelity, December 1972 (Shostakovich/Stravinsky)
‘John Ogdon and his wife Brenda Lucas have achieved a performance worthy, at almost every point, of the music. The actual playing is just as stunning as in Ogdon’s Vingt Regards … This is a record to shake the cobwebs from many a clogged ear.’ Stereo Review, November 1972 (Messiaen: Visions de l’Amen)
‘Ogdon and Lucas give clear, pointed, relevant renditions.’ High Fidelity, November 1973 (Schumann)
‘A whopping big work on the line of the B minor Sonata … certainly imposing, not to say overwhelming, in this performance.’ Stereo Review, December 1973 (Liszt: Concerto pathétique)