Modelled on Ferruccio Busoni’s Fantasia contrappuntistica, Kaikhosru Sorabji’s Opus clavicembalisticum is made up of three large parts that encompass, among other things, two large variation sets, a pair of cadenzas and four immense fugues. The piano-writing is for the most part prodigiously thick and complex, spreading across as many as seven staves. For decades Guinness World Records cited it as the longest non-repetitive piano composition ever published. Still, Opus clavicembalisticum was more myth than reality to all but a few cognoscenti.

That changed in the 1980s, when Michael Habermann recorded the first two movements, soon followed by Geoffrey Douglas Madge’s first integral public performances (both commercially released) and John Ogdon’s studio recording. Then Jonathan Powell publicly began playing OC in its entirety, starting in 2003. So did Daan Vandewalle the following year, beginning with a concert in the acoustically splendid Bruges Concertgebouw. He returned to the venue in 2023, fulfilling his long-held desire to record OC in the studio.

Abetted by a first-class recording team and a wonderfully regulated concert grand, Vandewalle’s OC is by far the most technically accurate and musically consistent version on record, as well as the best-engineered. Although he generally takes slower tempos than Madge and Ogdon, his pacing enables a higher level of scrutiny over details, as well as for complex textures to fully speak out and breathe. Although Habermann’s studio recording of the first two sections is faster and texturally leaner than Vandewalle’s, in the first two fugues Vandewalle takes special care to scale Sorabji’s multi-tiered dynamics, and rarely lets tempos sag when the piano-writing increases in density. While Ogdon tears through the Fantasia, Vandewalle mirrors Madge’s deliberation and meticulous articulation.

If lofty rigour prevails throughout Part 1, the Theme and 49 Variations that open Part 2 (‘Interludium primum’) reveal more of Sorabji’s heart, allowing for Vandewalle’s expressive and colouristic resources to come into their own. The pianist intones the theme’s legatissimo, slow-moving chords as if his instrument’s hammers were organ stops. He vividly characterises each variation through timbre and touch: note, for example, the effortlessly ambidextrous interplay between Var 5’s descending left-hand octaves and the right hand’s bushels of chords, Var 12’s other-worldly half-tints and the inner voices emerging out of Var 13’s super-controlled passagework. In the climactic build-up from Var 25 to 29, Vandewalle again generates momentum and tension by careful attention to dynamics and not getting too loud too soon. Ogdon’s ridiculously fast ‘Cadenza I’ makes a hash of the melodic cogency and the clearly formed chordal climaxes one perceives in Vandewalle’s slower rendition.

Vandewalle builds Part 3’s ‘Cadenza II’ from the bottom up in a massive, emphatic manner that contrasts with the drier, crisper and more supple approach that I prefer in Madge’s 1983 Chicago performance. To compare Madge and Vandewalle’s ‘Fuga IV’ quadruplex in the subject’s exposition is like experiencing night and day in the same city. Madge is altogether brisker and more détaché, in contrast to the younger pianist’s inflected and songful phrasing. On the other hand, the elaborate episodes benefit from Vandewalle’s astute linear awareness and flexibility in moments of transition. Since one can conserve energy under studio conditions, it’s not surprising how the pianist shapes Sorabji’s reams of notes into sweeping cumulative paragraphs. Lukas Huisman’s excellent annotations also deserve mention.

Madge and Ogdon still have much to offer in their respective recordings of Opus clavicembalisticum, and I hope that Madge’s 1982 Utrecht premiere, issued on LP by the Royal Conservatory Series label, will someday appear on CD or as a digital download. Yet there’s no question that Vandewalle raises the bar and has now set a reference standard for this pianistic Mount Everest.

Sorabji Opus clavicembalisticum

Daan Vandewalle pf

Passacaille PAS9703 (5 CDs)

This review originally appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of International Piano. Never miss an issue – subscribe today