Concerts

John Ogden

John Ogdon is a huge and fantastic pianist. He, with the NZBC Symphony Orchestra under Juan Matteucci, and a male chorus from the Orpheus Choir presented the first and probably the last performance of Busoni's Piano Concerto (1904), Op 39, we shall ever hear.

It has five movements and took about 70 minutes to perform (Ogdon's recent recording of the work took 68 minutes). Judging by the reaction of the audience they might have been set to stay there all night.

As a concerto I don't know of anything else to equal it. In style it is unique—five contrasting movements that ramble and bore, flare up into unbelievable majesty, and die away almost too suddenly.

The piano very rarely states a theme. It merely interprets the guts with Lisztian cadenzas (there's no other word).

Ogdon's fight was convincing. He simply envelops the piano like some mysterious Budda hardly poking the usual faces in the many "delicato" or "angst" passages.

He sat squat and determined looking up at Mr. Matteucci always and flung off the entire work with such a brashness and virtuosity that it was hard to believe it all came from the piano.

One was inclined to drift with the work—there was always a majestic section to wake up to.

In the fifth movement Busoni includes a choir which sings quiety "mysterious words" from Oehlenschlaeger's Aladdin.

It almost seemed inspired but the ending came too soon—not on a flourish but a passive quietness that earned almost unprecented applause.

It would be interesting to see if HMV release the record here. Many people were greatly impressed—it might be concert-going history.

—M. J. Heath.