John Ogdon


John Andrew Howard Ogdon was an English pianist and composer.

Biography

Career

Ogdon was born in Mansfield Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire, and attended the Manchester Grammar School, before studying at the Royal Northern College of Music between 1953 and 1957, where his fellow students under Richard Hall included Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Elgar Howarth and Peter Maxwell Davies. Together they formed New Music Manchester, a group dedicated to the performances of serial and other modern works. His tutor there was Claud Biggs. As a boy he had studied with Iso Elinson and after leaving college, he further studied with Gordon Green, Denis Matthews, Dame Myra Hess, and Egon Petri—the latter in Basel, Switzerland.
He won first prize at the London Liszt Competition in 1961 and consolidated his growing international reputation by winning another first prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1962, jointly with Vladimir Ashkenazy.
Ogdon was able to play most pieces at sight and had committed a huge range of pieces to memory. He intended to record the complete piano works of Sergei Rachmaninoff, a feat which would constitute about 6 full-length CDs, but only recorded about half of them. The recordings were released in 2001. He recorded all ten Scriabin sonatas in 1971. Ogdon was also a formidable exponent of the works of Alkan and Busoni. In more familiar repertoire, he revealed deep musical sensibilities, always buttressed by a colossal technique. He also recorded a number of duo-piano works with his wife, Brenda Lucas, also known as Brenda Lucas Ogdon.
On 2 February 1969, on British television, he gave the first modern performance of Edward Elgar's Concert Allegro, Op. 46. The piece was never published and the manuscript had long been believed lost, but it came to light in 1968. Ogdon and Diana McVeigh developed a performing version of the piece from Elgar's manuscript, which was full of corrections, deletions and additions. Between 1976 and 1980 Ogdon was Professor of Music at Indiana University. He completed four comprehensive tours of Southern Africa to enthusiastic acclaim between 1968 and 1976 and dedicated a composition to his tour organizer Hans Adler
His own compositions number more than 200, and include 4 operas, 2 large works for orchestra, 3 cantatas, songs, chamber music, a substantial amount of music for solo piano, and 2 piano concertos, the first of which he recorded. The majority of his music was composed for the piano. These include 50 transcriptions of works by composers as diverse as Stravinsky, Palestrina, Mozart, Satie and Wagner. He also made piano arrangements of songs by Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and George Gershwin and he wrote unaccompanied sonatas for violin, flute and cello. A planned symphony based on the works of Herman Melville, and a comic opera were left unfinished. The original manuscripts of many of John Ogdon's compositions are deposited in the Royal Northern College of Music Library.

Breakdown

Ogdon's health was good, and his physical constitution was strong, as his wife often recalled in her biography. Regarded as a "gentle giant", known and loved for his kindness and generosity, he had tremendous energy. But an everyday business argument seemed to upset him more than expected and then suddenly in 1973 he experienced a severe breakdown. This sometimes changed his personality completely. His illness was initially diagnosed as schizophrenia, but then changed to manic depression. Either condition may have been inherited from his father, who suffered several psychotic episodes and a mental breakdown. Ogdon spent some time in the Maudsley Hospital in London, and in general needed more nursing than it was possible to provide while touring. Nevertheless, he was reported to maintain three hours' practice a day on the hospital's piano.
In 1983, after emerging from hospital, he played at the opening of the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham. In 1988 he released a five-disc recording of an interpretation of Sorabji's Opus clavicembalisticum. He died in August 1989 of pneumonia, brought on by undiagnosed diabetes.

Legacy

His wife Brenda, along with writer Michael Kerr, wrote a biography of her life with him in 1981, and released a second edition in 1989, shortly before his death. Another biography by Charles Beauclerk was published in March 2014.
In the BBC film about his life, Virtuoso, based on the biography, Ogdon was played by Alfred Molina, who won a Best Actor award from the Royal Television Society for the performance. The production interpreted Ogdon's illness as manic depression rather than schizophrenia, since he had responded much better to treatment for the former condition. Brenda Ogdon also recalled being informed that his obsessive musical work could have been interpreted as a symptom of manic depression.
In June 2014 the hour-long documentary, directed by Zoe Dobson, entitled John Ogdon: Living with Genius was broadcast on BBC Four, with Ogdon's wife Brenda and her children Richard and Annabel telling his personal story for the first time. The programme featured unique archive and contemporary performance. The programme was followed by John Ogdon: A Musical Tribute featuring piano performances by Peter Donohoe, including Ogdon's own Theme and Variations.
John is survived by his daughter and son, Annabel and Richard Ogdon.

Discography

A reasonably comprehensive discography can be found on the website of the John Ogdon Foundation reproduced from The Gramophone Spring 1998 edition as compiled by Michael Glover. However, a small number of other recordings have since come to light: