I first heard of Sorabji in 1988 when I bought a ticket to an intriguing concert on the South Bank whose programme consisted of a single 4 hour virtouso piano piece public performances of which were banned by the composer unless he gave his express consent! This was John Ogdon's historic performance of Opus Clavicembalisticum at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 14 July 1988. I still have my ticket which amazingly states the name of the work to be performed but fails to mention John Ogdon!

The hall was sparsely populated but a surprising number of scores were in evidence. I remember it took me a while to settle into the style of the music but I was soon engrossed and by the end it seemed as though the last three and a half hours had passed more quickly than the first 20 minutes! As soon as the CDs became available I bought them - no surprise there you may say but they were very expensive for my pocket at the time and to cap it all I had no CD player and no imminent prospects of acquiring one! This was 1988 remember - the days of tapes and LPs!

It was also the year that Alistair Hinton set up the Sorabji Archive and thanks to his initiative Sorabji scores are readily available. Therefore in addition to various Sorabji compositions this month's listening includes an extended composition by Hinton which I heard premiered by Jonathan Powell at the Warehouse in London on 11 November 2006. This is Sequentia Claviensis from 1993-94 which is dedicated jointly to Carlo Grante (who commissioned it) and Sorabji.

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji was born in Chingford in Essex, England in 1892 and died (also in England) in 1988. Originally called Leon Dudley he later adopted his given Parsi names Kaikhosru Shapurji. Kaikhosru is Persian for King Cyrus the Great of Persia, Shapurji means 'Son of the King' and Sorabji is a Parsi, a Zoroastrian.

Sorabji was a prolific composer and wrote compositions of enormous length and complexity (totalling about 11,000 pages!). Besides being a composer and critic he was also a pianist and in 1919 he met his idol Busoni and played for him his First Piano Sonata which was composed that year and dedicated to Busoni. Busoni referred to him as "a budding talent of an altogether novel variety" though in a letter to his wife he was perhaps less gracious - "A fine unusual person, in spite of his ugly music. A primeval forest with many weeds and briars, but strange and voluptuous". By contrast Sorabji wrote of Busoni in 1932 "Merely to see Busoni come on a platform, but, above all, to stand in his presence and speak with him, was to feel oneself in the presence of an intellectual Titan like those ... men so great that they cease any more to be human beings".

Opus Clavicembalisticum was completed in 1930 and "marks his emergence from the period of apprenticeship through which every composer must pass and stamps his originality on every page". Its three part structure reveals an indebtedness to Busoni's Fantasia Contrapuntistica and indeed there are more direct references to that work as pointed out by Ronald Stevenson in his analysis. The work was premiered by Sorabji himself in 1930 though with significant cuts roughly halving its duration. On a different occasion Eric Blom provided testimony of Sorabji's pianism as follows "Mr Sorabji's works have been called unplayable, an assertion he refuted triumphantly".

On the death of his father Sorabji was obliged to spend nine months in India in 1933 one result of which was an unusual footnote to the Fantasia ispanica - "1.30 p.m. XXX.VII.MCMXXXIII in the accursed poisonous and pestilent city of Bombay Metropolis of dulness [sic]" (taken from CD notes by Jonathan Powell though my copy of the score lacks the last three words of this quote).

The 100 Transcendental Studies were written between 1940 and 1944 and last approximately 7 hours in all. Although many of the earlier studies are of normal duration some of the later examples are far more extensive and the set ends with a quintuple fugue lasting around 45 minutes! The studies are in the process of being recorded by Fredrik Ullen. So far three CDs have been released covering the first 62 studies. I contacted BIS in March 2007 to enquire about the progress of this project and was told that the first 75 studies had already been recorded so it's possible that the full set has been completed but not yet released. It does seem to take a long time from recording studio to release!

Like all the other works mentioned here the score of the studies is available from the Sorabji Archive. When I bought my copy some years ago the first 18 studies had not been typeset and were hand-written by none other than Marc Andre Hamelin but the full 100 studies have now been fully typeset. For any of these works visit the Sorabji Archive and contact Alistair Hinton who is always most helpful and efficient.

Selected compositions for this month's listening are listed below. Actually this will take at least two months given how busy I am but I may list something more mainstream next month to run in parallel. Click the links below for more details (these are the only Sorabji works for which I currently have the score but I hope to acquire some more soon! Since there is a large number of studies I've grouped them according to their availability on CD by Ullen (and those not yet released are omitted).

• 1 - Mouvemente
• 2 - Vivace e leggiero
• 3 - no title
• 4 - Scriabinesco
• 5 - Staccato e leggiero
• 6 - no title
• 7 - Leggiero abbastanza
• 8 - no title
• 9 - Staccato e leggiero
• 10 - Con brio ed impeto - Volante
• 11 - Animato abbastanza
• 12 - Leggiero quasi 'saltando'
• 13 - no title
• 14 - Tranquillamente soave
• 15 - no title
• 16 - no title
• 17 - Molto accentato
• 18 - Liscio. Tranquillamente scorrevole
• 19 - Saltando e leggiero
• 20 - Con fantasia
• 21 - Con eleganza e disinvoltura
• 22 - Leggiero volante a presto assai
• 23 - Dolcemente scorrevole
• 24 - Con fantasia e grazia
• 25 - Vivace e secco

• 26 - Dolcissimo
• 27 - Staccato e leggiero a capriccio
• 28 - Leggiero e volante
• 29 - A capriccio
• 30 - Con fantasia
• 31 - Vivace assai
• 32 - Legato possibile: quasi dolce
• 33 - Vivace e brioso
• 34 - Soave e dolce
• 35 - no title
• 36 - Mano sinistra sempre sola
• 37 - Riflessioni
• 38 - Con fantasia
• 39 - no title
• 40 - Moderato
• 41 - no title
• 42 - Impetuoso e con fuoco ed energia
• 43 - no title

• 44 - Bin cantato. Dolce sciaro
• 45 - no title
• 46 - no title
• 47 - Leggiero e a capriccio
• 48 - Volante
• 49 - Vivace ma non troppo
• 50 - Per il pedale 3
• 51 - no title
• 52 - no title
• 53 - A capriccio
• 54 - no title
• 55 - no title
• 56 - Moderato
• 57 - no title
• 58 - no title
• 59 - Quasi fantasia
• 60 - no title
• 61 - no title
• 62 - no title

• Fantasia ispanica
• Opus Clavicembalisticum
• Passeggiata veneziana
• Piano Sonata No. 1
• Villa Tasca
• Sequentia Claviensis (by Alistair Hinton)