Output details

Second Symphony for Organ (1929-32)

The submission consists of my performance of Kaikhosru Sorabji’s Second Symphony for Organ (1929-32). It is drawn together from three live public performances, all made in June/July 2010. The first movement is from York Minster, the rest from the University of Glasgow, with the exception of the Toccata (the 3rd section of the final movement), which comes from a recital given in the Berliner Dom (July 2010). The recording presented here was broadcast in this form by the Dutch radio station Konzertsender in 2011.

I have been deeply involved in this music since 1987 and visited the composer five times during 1988. The score used for the performance was drawn from my new critical edition of the complete organ works of K S Sorabji, produced between 2008 and 2013. The edition comprises all three solo organ symphonies (1923/4, 1929-32, 1949-53) and draws on photocopies of the three original manuscripts, the print score of No. 1 (Curwen 1925), and my own handwritten copy of No. 2 (1988-91). The manuscripts are often quite beautiful to look at but close inspection reveals many thousands of ambiguities as well as errors, all of which require clarification and solution – hence the need for a performing score.

The unrelenting extreme technical complexity of the music, as well as its hugeness of scale, has ensured its complete obscurity until now. No other organist has ever attempted a complete performance of any of these works, although performances of the middle movement of No. 1 were given by Edward Emlyn Davies (1928) and Thomas Trotter (1987). I have given eight complete performances of No. 1 and two complete performances of No. 2. No. 3 is scheduled for 2014.