Sorabji’s Lost Toccata Recorded

SORABJI: Toccata Terza /Abel Sánchez-Aguilera, pno / Piano Classics PCL-10304

Imagine my surprise to discover this album on the Naxos New Release list! One of my favorite 20th-century composers, in a massive work for piano (did he write any other kind?) hitherto unknown. How did such a thing come about?

The full story is just as incredible as the piece itself, for on this recording we hear Abel Sánchez-Aguilera who, less than 15 years ago, was not a professional pianist but a Biochemist studying stem cell research and leukemia in Madrid, Boston and my home town of Cincinnati. Thus it is understandable how someone with such a complex mind could take an interest in a composer whose music, though primarily tonal, is among the most complex ever written for his instrument.

Sánchez-Aguilera’s discovery of this massive work started in September 2019 when he received

an email from Alistair Hinton, curator of the Sorabji Archive, asking if I would be interested in performing Toccata Terza…The Autograph of this unpublished composition from 1955 had been missing since the early sixties. The score had been gifted by Sorabji to the dedicatee, American critic Clinton Gray-Fisk, together with certain earlier manuscripts, all of which went missing after Gray-Fisk’s death and were generally believed to have been lost and possibly destroyed. Some of these manuscripts, such as Piano Sonata “No. 0” and Toccatinetta sopra C.G.F., surfaced decades later; however, the whereabouts of Toccata Terza remained unknown and it was considered to be a lost work until – in the days preceding that unexpected email – it was suddenly discovered in a private collection.

Well, cut off my legs and call me shorty. Needless to say, Sánchez-Aguilera was bowled over by the discovery since this work “expands the vocabulary of the two earlier toccatas by means of a more audacious harmonic language.” And if you’re wondering, as I did, why Sorabji didn’t suggest this Toccata to pianist Michael Haberman in the 1970s when the two became friendly, it was because, as I learned online, Gray-Fisk had already died in 1966 and the work was already officially “lost.” Yet I’m still puzzled as to why Sorabji would send the manuscript of such a large and important work to someone without making a photocopy for himself since Xerox machines had been around since 1949.

My first impression of Sánchez-Aguilera’s playing in the first movement of this Toccata was of a technically assured pianist whose tone seemed to me very bright—something I’m not used to in pianists who play Sorabji. Haberman, John Ogdon, Geoffrey Douglas Madge and even Sorabji himself, in the rare recording of him playing his own Gulistān, all have a warmer tone which makes the music sound richer and more sustained. But as I got used to hearing him play, I also recognized Sánchez-Aguilera’s emotional commitment to this music as well as his full understanding of the “long line” of the music, and this was particularly important in the massive third movement, which runs (I kid you not!) more than 48 minutes.

As usual, trying to describe Sorabji’s music in words is self-defeating. So much of it is complex and goes by the ear so quickly that, although I can surely describe it, the description takes far longer than the listening experience. Suffice it to say that despite its harmonic complexity, the score, like most of Sorabji’s works, tends towards tonality. It also uses a great many “falling chromatics” which gives it its special character. Considering the fact that he always denied his British heritage, despite being born in England, none of Sorabji’s music really has an Eastern sound, either in harmony or melody, despite the fact that his melodic lines are never tuneful or easy for the ear to grasp.

Thus you just have to take the music as it comes, and Sánchez-Aguilera’s very bright tone helps to clarity the inner lines to an astonishing degree, which in itself is helpful to the neophyte listener. Also for a man who formerly studied molecular structure, the character of the cells of music used in Sorabji’s works and the way he combined these “musical molecules” were sure to appeal to the pianist.

Yet the question always is, did Sorabji “over-write” his music? That’s a hard question to answer since everything he wrote is logical in its own way and makes musical sense, yet to this day there are few classical music lovers who would tolerate a live performance of any of his massive works. Aside from the greater structure of his music and its tremendous length, there’s only so much one could listen to in one (long) sitting without overloading the mind. It was for this reason that Egon Petri shied away from performing Sorabji in live concerts even though he greatly admired the man and his music, which was, and remained. brilliant. I think that most composers would consider themselves geniuses were they able to turn out even one such piece in a lifetime, yet Sorabji turned out such pieces by the truckload over his long life (he died at 96 and continued to compose into his nineties). The best analogy I can make, I think, is to compare Sorabji’s music to a really large Sudoku puzzle: it’s possible to solve it in the mind, but not always probable. Even Sánchez-Aguilera took his time, recording it throughout July of 2022.

Considering the relatively few classical aficionados who 1) might have heard of Sorabji, 2) actually heard his music, and 3) like it, just recording and issuing this work was practically a labor of love for the pianist and an act of generosity on the part of Piano Classics, despite their continuing policy of issuing quite a few albums of arcane piano repertoire, many of which, I am sure, have limited sales appeal, but with each new release of Sorabji albums such as Fredrik Ullén’s six-volume set of Sorabji’s 100 Transcendental Études for Bis, appreciation for this eccentric, eclectic, challenging yet rewarding composer grows. Bitter about the lukewarm and often negative reception of his works and upset by a few very incompetent performances of it he heard, Sorabji banned public performances of his music for nearly 30 years until pianists such as Haberman, Ogdon and Madge came along to warm the cockles of his heart, but the growing Sorabji discography has slowly but surely built up an appreciative if still relatively small audience. Such listeners will be thrilled to have this new recording, as I am.

—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley

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