Opus Clavicembalisticum
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Opus Clavicembalisticum is a solo piano piece composed by Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, completed on June 26, 1930. It is characterized by its four (sometimes five) hour duration and its extreme demands upon the pianist - it was once listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest piano piece ever written. Several of Sorabji's later works, such as the Symphonic Variations (which occupy 484 pages of manuscript - probably about 8 hours of music, similar in duration to Frederic Rzewski's work The Road) are even longer. It is considered by many to be the most difficult piece of music ever written for the piano, dwarfing most pieces in its complexity and difficulty. Sorabji was inspired to compose the work after seeing a performance Busoni's Fantasia Contrappuntistica, and Opus Clavicembalisticum seems to be a homage to Busoni's work.
Opus Clavicembalisticum has twelve movements, of hugely varying dimensions, from a brief cadenza, lasting only three minutes, to a mammoth interlude, containing a toccata, adagio, and passacaglia (with 81 variations), requiring around an hour to play. The work's movements are set in three parts, each larger than the last:
Pars Prima
I. Introito
II. Preludio-Corale
III. Fuga I
IV. Fantasia
V. Fuga a due soggetti
Pars Altera
VI. Interludium Primum (Thema cum XLIX Variationibus)
VII. Cadenza I
VIII. Fuga Tertia Triplex
Pars Tertia
IX. Interludium Alterum (Toccata, Adagio, Passacaglia cum LXXXI Variationibus)
X. Cadenza II
XI. Fuga IV. Quadruplex.
XII. Coda-Stretta
In a letter upon completion of the massive work, Sorabji wrote to a friend of his:
With a wracking head and literally my whole body shaking as with ague I write this and tell you I have just this afternoon early finished Clavicembalisticum... The closing 4 pages are so cataclysmic and catastrophic as anything I've ever done — the harmony bites like nitric acid - the counterpoint grinds like the mills of God...
There have only been a handful of performances of Opus Clavicembalisticum. The first was by Sorabji himself in 1930, but the second did not occur until 1982, in the hands of the Australian pianist Geoffrey Douglas Madge. The performance was released on a set of four LPs, which are now no longer available. He went on to perform it in its entirety on five other occasions, one of which in 1983 was recently released by BIS in 1999. The piece has also been recorded by John Ogdon, who performed it twice. Jonathan Powell has performed it on five occasions, and will begin a studio recording of the work after two more public performances of the work. The currently available recordings (by Madge and Ogdon) are both widely considered to be highly unsatisfactory. The only other complete performance in public was given by Daan Vanderwalle, although a number of pianists have performed excerpts, usually the first two movements. For example, J. J. Schmid performed part of the work at the Biennale Bern 03. [1]
