
Sorabji, 1945 (Joan Muspratt)
Sorabji was born Leon Dudley Sorabji in Essex to an Indian father and English mother. His music studies seem to have stopped around 1915 and after correspondence with English composer Peter Warlock started in 1913, he began to work on composition and music criticism.
His first Piano Sonata was published with the assistance of Ferruccio Busoni in 1919. An earlier work, now numbered Piano Sonata No. 0, which dates from 1917, impresses us immediately with the advanced language with which he started his career:
Sorabji: Piano Sonata No. 0. (Soheil Nasseri, piano)
As a largely self-taught pianist, he faced much criticism of his early works as being unplayable. Despite his own reluctance and tendency to withdraw from the world, he performed concerts of his own works. Across his entire repertoire, the piano remains the principal instrument. He showed an understanding of the piano as more than a percussive instrument and his works show a sensitivity toward the piano’s build-in sonorities.
Two works are of importance. Opus clavicembalisticum is a work for solo piano completed in 1930. It was the longest piano work in the repertoire at the time of its completion – a full performance of the work comes in at 4 hours and the CD recording is 6 discs long. It is thought that the inspiration for the piece was Ferruccio Busoni’s Fantasia contrappuntistica. It is a 12-movement work, organized in 3 parts, each larger than the last. The Interlude that begins part 3, which is made up of a toccata, an adagio and a passacaglia and 61-part variation set, by itelf is an hour long.
Sorabji: Opus Clavicembalisticum, I. Introito (Geoffrey Douglas Madge, piano)

Sorabji, 1988 (Clive Spencer-Bentley)
Sorabji: 100 Études transcendantes, No. 59. Quasi Fantasia (Fredrik Ullen, piano)
The Opus clavicembalisticum was not Sorabji’s longest work. His later Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchstra, written between1935-37 and 1953-56, is supposed to be some 9 hours long. His reputation as a composer has been aided by the interest of pianists such as Yonty Solomon who started to perform Sorabji’s work in the late 1970s in a series of recitals in London.
It’s rare to have a composer of such breadth who also choses to isolate himself so thoroughly. Come explore the pianistic world of Sorabji and find not the “Howard Hughes of Music” but a great master of 20th century piano music.