John Ogdon – Sonata (1969):
Peter Sheppard Skaerved-violin
December 9th 1990 Blackheath Concert Halls
Engineer: John Taylor
The Music of John Ogdon
To my surprise and delight, a concert recording which I made in the December of 1990 has appeared, available as part of a 2CD set of Ogden’s music. This is being sold to raise money for the John Ogdon Foundation. See the link below.
The concert took place at Blackheath concert halls. I played Ogdon’s Solo Sonata, Romance for Violin and Cello (with the late Raphael Sommer), and Three Pieces for Violin and Piano (with the American pianist Skye Atman).
I met Ogdon just once, when I was a very green 15 year old violinist playing in the Essex Youth Orchestra. He came to play in a shambolically organised concert at the Thurrock Leisure Centre. Nothing seemed to affect his focus on the keyboard; I sat in the first violins, a few feet from him, transfixed at this encounter with a true musical genius. For the first time, or so it seemed to me, I was meeting a man who was music, totally inhabited by the concerto (Grieg) that he was playing. After the concert, I went down to his dressing room to stammer out my thanks. And that was it.
So when Brenda Lucas Ogdon invited me to take part in this event in 1990, I was delighted, and the more so when I realised that his compositions are filled with the same total identification that I heard in his playing.
Posted on February 24th, 2010 by Peter Sheppard Skaerved