Literature 1988 Part 2

A work with a name like this can only be unusual. The opus in question is a three-part solo piano epic, lasting a shade under four hours and of a complexity to match. Combine an all-night raga sequence with Bach's Art of Fugue and you're getting close. Is it worth the listen? Yes, if you want to give your heart and mind–not just your brain–a real workout. For all his outsize demands, Sorabji was a front-rank pianist, who understood technique as a physical end to spiritual means. There are stretches of manic complexity here, but also passages of real poetry: try the lengthy "Interludium primum" which opens Part 2, or many of the 81(!) variations which follow the magisterial "Passacaglia" in Part 3. It's music which cries out for transcendental virtuosity, and Geoffrey Douglas Madge gives it just that. He gave four performances over six years and this Chicago one from 1983 assumed mythic status among those who heard it. Remastered for CD release, it is awe-inspiring in its grasp of what's gone into this music: the audience clearly living it with the pianist every step of the way. Hear it for yourself, then why not run the marathon or climb Everest for relaxation?

One of the most celebrated singer/songwriters of her generation, Lucinda Williams was also a fiercely independent artist who had to fight for the creative freedom that allowed her to do her best work. The daughter of a well-respected poet, Williams brought a literacy and sense of detail to her work that was unpretentious but powerfully evocative and emotional, which led to a number of major artists covering her tunes while she was still establishing herself as a performer. As a vocalist, Williams used the rough edges of her instrument to her advantage, allowing the grit of her voice to heighten the authenticity of her performance.

John Ogdon was one of the great interpreters of Ferruccio Busoni's keyboard music in the first stage of its latter-day revival, and his EMI Angel recording of Busoni's Piano Concerto, Op. 39, can be said to have "made" that work as a viable, if impractical, concert staple. Between that triumph in 1967 and the recordings on Altarus' Busoni: Piano Works, made in 1988 – the last full year of Ogdon's short life – there were a host of detours and disappointments for the pianist. A nervous breakdown or two, long hospitalizations, longer absences from the concert stage, and a comeback received lukewarmly by critics were all hallmarks of a career that would have stopped lesser men cold.

John Ogdon was one of the great interpreters of Ferruccio Busoni's keyboard music in the first stage of its latter-day revival, and his EMI Angel recording of Busoni's Piano Concerto, Op. 39, can be said to have "made" that work as a viable, if impractical, concert staple. Between that triumph in 1967 and the recordings on Altarus' Busoni: Piano Works, made in 1988 – the last full year of Ogdon's short life – there were a host of detours and disappointments for the pianist. A nervous breakdown or two, long hospitalizations, longer absences from the concert stage, and a comeback received lukewarmly by critics were all hallmarks of a career that would have stopped lesser men cold.

John Ogdon was one of the great interpreters of Ferruccio Busoni's keyboard music in the first stage of its latter-day revival, and his EMI Angel recording of Busoni's Piano Concerto, Op. 39, can be said to have "made" that work as a viable, if impractical, concert staple. Between that triumph in 1967 and the recordings on Altarus' Busoni: Piano Works, made in 1988 – the last full year of Ogdon's short life – there were a host of detours and disappointments for the pianist. A nervous breakdown or two, long hospitalizations, longer absences from the concert stage, and a comeback received lukewarmly by critics were all hallmarks of a career that would have stopped lesser men cold.