Is it known how, and from whom, Sorabji acquired his evidently staggering technical mastery of the keyboard? Wikipedia is frustratingly silent on this point. He must, surely, have taken extensive formal lessons?
Little is yet known about Sorabji's early life, not least his piano studies, other than that they appear to have been pursued privately rather than at a conservatoire as such; I can therefore only guess here, but it seems likely that much of his keyboard facility developed from strenuous bouts of working through the more big-boned works in the repertoire - Liszt, Alkan, Rachmaninoff, Godowsky, Busoni et al. He also used to practice from time to time on a Virgil Clavier (silent keyboard) and, when he did, he often gradually turned the pressure up to its full capacity, with a view to finding playing the actual piano afterwards a good deal less physically strenuous. I am also unable to comment helpfully on Sorabji's pianistic prowess when he was at what one may reasonably assume to have been the height of his powers as a player, which was during the years when he gave occasional performances, i.e. between the two world wars, as I am not 120+ years of age and there were no recordings made of his playing in those days; once he ceased to perform, however, it is fairly certain that he rarely practised any longer, concentrating as he did for many years largely on composition. He was in any case a somewhat reluctant performer.
And may one enquire about the songs for soprano voice - are they a cycle, or an album set, or a looser collection... and what texts are set in them? I ask this question on behalf of an interested party, and not for myself.
You may enquire about anything that you like! All of these are listed in the catalogue on the website (
www.sorabji-archive.co.uk), including text sources and all but one have been recorded by the American team of Elizabeth Farnum and Margaret Kampmeier on the US Centaur label (details again are on the website); they comprise three cycles of three each and a number of individual ones, almost all to French texts. Charles Hopkins (1952-2007) translated all of these texts into English (although, of course, the songs are sung in the original French). Further details are to be found in
Sorabji: A Critical Celebration to which I referred earlier. Sorabji played the piano in three of them in Paris in 1921 for soprano Marthe Martine; thereafter, there appear to have been no performances of any of them until 1979, when these and others were performed by Jane Manning and Yonty Solomon. Numerous sopranos across Europe and in US have performed them since those days; next to Elizabeth Farnum, the singer who has performed the most of them is the English soprano Sarah Leonard.
