Brilliant First Half Of Concert

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30511, 5 August 1964, Page 18

Brilliant First Half Of Concert

The internationally-famed young British pianist, Mr John Ogdon, gave a recital in the Civic Theatre last evening, and played a* programme which displayed his technical brilliance and roused his hearers to enthusiastic acclaim.

The programme began with Beethoven’s Sonata in C major, Op. 2, No. 3. Mr Ogdon’s playing made an immediately favourable and arrestingly interesting impression. His touch always has plenty of weight in reserve and he produces great power from the instrument with excellent control of tonal quality. It is playing of orchestral brilliance with seemingly as many varieties of colour. Through over-all depth of sonorities he produces the clear and resounding brass, the tang of the oboe, and the dulcet singing of the flute, all with a quite outstanding and amazing control of legato playing. His bands seem to act as a prism giving new colours with every graceful turn.

He brought forth the nobility of Beethoven’s music and the first movement was delightful with its cascading scales, its challenging and frolicsome passages of thirds, and the joy of the music was expressed in the grand manner, eschewing all sentimentality. Rippling little runs came with fascinating coolness. The second movement was magnificent. Following the gentle breathing out of the subject, there was a liquid flow in the music, enlivened with the loveliest turns of nuance. The occasional heavy chords came with the resounding clang of a tocsin call. The scherzo came with good humour in a merry dance with gay ribbons fluttering in the breeze; and the gala atmosphere surged on into the final rondo which was played with scintillating magic in tonal values giving the impression of countless fountains each giving off scintillating reflections. Mr Ogdon then gave us a remarkable tour de force in his playing of both books

of the Brahms Variations on a Theme by Paganini. He announced the theme as a peal from a vast campanile ringing forth with tidings of jubilation. Then with finely-poised poetic insight he swept all before him in richly romantic interpretation, changing from demanding and resounding clangour to the softest wisps of gossamer sound. Martial panoply gave way to glancing and darting shadows with gentle murmur of water gurgling over stones. The speed at which he played some of the very difficult variations was fantastic and the rippling lightness of his touch, with every note perfectly clear, was an exciting joy to hear. It would be hard to imagine Mr Ogdon ever producing greater technical brilliance in these variations. What will come to them from him later will be a more closely-knit architectural unity. Had the programme ended there, Mr Ogdon would have undoubtedly left a markedly thrilling sense of his powers with all his hearers. It is regrettable that the second half of the programme was not

completely satisfying. Chopin’s Scherzi in B flat minor, and C sharp minor, were both played with great technical facility and with poetic feeling and imagination; but much more convincing and deeper interpretations have been heard here many times, and there seemed to be a Lisztian veneer to the tone which failed to arouse much enthusiasm.

Liszt’s “Forgotten Waltz." a charming enough little trifle, could have been completely forgotten without any harm coming to anyone. His Fantasia on Themes from Don Giovanni was anything but a trifle technically, and Mr Ogdon could command admira tion for being able to play so many notes so very quickly even if they were not at all times of that wonderful clarity shown in the earlier part of the programme. As for the work itself, it was a ghastly rhodomontade, very difficult to learn and to play, and a crashing bore to hear. As encores he played three short works by Debussy with delicacy and charm of manner. —C.F.B.