John Ogdon: Piano Works
Tyler Hay (piano)
Not surprisingly, Ogdon’s piano-writing is thoroughly idiomatic and physically logical for the average hand. But the music itself sometimes lacks point…The young pianist Tyler Hay has brilliantly...
John Ogdon: Piano Works
Tyler Hay (piano)
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Not surprisingly, Ogdon’s piano-writing is thoroughly idiomatic and physically logical for the average hand. But the music itself sometimes lacks point…The young pianist Tyler Hay has brilliantly...
About
John Ogdon was one of the greatest musical geniuses of the 20th century. His astonishing career on the concert platform saw him become one of the world’s most popular pianists after winning joint 1rst prize in the 1982 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Away from his life as a pianist, he was privately a very passionate composer throughout his career, he wrote appr. 200 works, primarily for his own instrument, the piano. During his time studying at the Royal Manchester College of Music he was a founding member of the group New Music Manchester, and he became an advocate for the piano music of his fellow members and inspirators Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwhistle and Ronal Stevenson.
Ogdon constructed his piano pieces using a kaleidoscopic collage technique that throws around ideas in a potpourri of interesting colours and contrasts. Despite the enormous technical complexities the piano writing is wonderfully idiomatic, in the tradition of Liszt, Alkan, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Busoni.
Young British pianist Tyler Hay has the technique and imagination in full measure to present this fascinating piano music, which has remained unheard too long. Recorded in the presence of Ogdon’s widow Brenda Lucas, who provided the manuscripts and valuable information as to the performance of the music.
Contents and tracklist
Awards and reviews
July 2018
Not surprisingly, Ogdon’s piano-writing is thoroughly idiomatic and physically logical for the average hand. But the music itself sometimes lacks point…The young pianist Tyler Hay has brilliantly mastered and assimilated these often elusive scores, even to the point where I heretically prefer his interpretations to Ogdon’s…Furthermore, Hay’s booklet notes prove him to be every inch as intelligent and insightful away from the keyboard.
July 2018
[Sonata] Hay’s performance is phenomenally good, a little slower than the composer, particularly in the complex central Andante, full of haunted textures and extremes of register. The outer movements, initiated by a four-note ostinato, are exhilarating, performed – and recorded – with impeccable clarity. The disc ends with what is arguably Ogdon’s most sustained essay in the transcendental pianism he so often deployed in the music of others, the wonderful Variations and Fugue (1960-3). What a terrific disc.
