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KAIKHOSRU SHAPURJI SORABJI

SEQUENTIA CYCLICA (1948‒49)

Theme Largo. Legatissimo sempre e nello stile medioevale detto ‘organum’

III. Legato, soave e liscio
V. Ardito, focosamente
XIII. Aria. Con fantasia e dolcezza
XVI. Marcia funebre
XVII. Soave e dolce
XI. Vivace e secco
XIX. Quasi Debussy
XIV. Punta d’organo

Kaikhosru Sorabji (1892—1988) was a half British, half Parsi Indian composer who lived in the UK his whole life. In the 1920s he wrote a set of variations on the Dies irae chant but considered it unsatisfactory. In the late 1940s he returned to this theme with his Sequentia Cyclica which, until his last days, he considered it to be one of his best works. It too is a set of variations – 27 to be exact – on a vast scale (the whole takes some eight hours to perform), though the dimensions of the variations themselves vary widely, from 2 to 90 minutes. Jonathan Powell gave the world première of the work in 2011, and then played it in the US, the Netherlands and Belgium. His recording of it (issued in 2020 on Piano Classics) was made at the JdP and won the German Critics’ Recording Prize that year; it also led to an invitation by Igor Levit to perform the work at the 2022 Heidelberger Frühling Festival. The selection of variations heard in this recording, made in the pianist’s home in the Carpathian mountains, gives a good overview of the range of the work and includes some of its most attractive writing.

Jonathan Powell is active as pianist, composer and researcher. An advocate of music from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, especially from Russia and Central/Eastern Europe, he is also a proponent of contemporary music, while his programmes frequently feature much standard repertoire. In 2009 he gave the first of his many performances of Scriabin’s 10 sonatas in one concert. During 2013 he toured Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus and Albeniz’ Iberia, while 2015 featured numerous performances of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata and Reger’s Bach Variations. Recent activities include a tour of the complete piano works of Xenakis and, in 2017, Liszt’s Sonata, and Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke. In 2018 he gave six performances of Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues. Solo recitals taken him to the Festival Radio France Montpellier, the sold-out Kammersaal of the Elbphilharmonie, the Raritäten der Klaviermusik am Schloss vor Husum, Vredenburg Muziekcentrum in Utrecht, across the US, Musica Sacra in Maastricht, the series Fundación BBVA in Bilbao, and the Moscow Conservatoire. In recent years, he has broadcast for Radio France, Radio Netherlands, Radio Deutschland Kultur, the BBC and Czech Radio. His recording of Sorabji’s Sequentia cyclia over seven discs, on Piano Classics was received rapturously by critics and was awarded the German Critics’ Disc Prize (Preis der Deutschen Schallplatenkritiken); he has been invited by pianist Igor Levit to perform the work at next year’s Heidelberger Frühling. Forthcoming CD releases include the première recording of Hans Winterberg’s 1st Piano Concerto, with the Berlin Radio SO under Johannes Kalitzke, for Capriccio. In 2021 he will record Xaver Scharwenka’s 1st Piano Concerto with the Poznań Philharmonic with conductor Łukasz Borowicz.