EMI is currently an excellent source of bargain issues. Last month saw the release of a tantalising 3-disc set featuring Martha Argerich and friends live at the 2006 Lugano Festival; this month brings the issue of an even more interesting 4-disc set of recordings made by John Ogdon, to mark what would have been his 70th birthday. Most of the recordings date from the sixties and early seventies, before the onset of his illness, and many are new to CD. Two have never before been published: with Sir John Pritchard and the Philharmonia, a Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, taped in 1963 within a few months of Ogdon’s winning joint first prize (with Vladimir Ashkenazy) in the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow; and a Bartok First Piano Concerto with Sargent and the Philharmonia. The featured Rachmaninov Piano Concerto no. 2 is a passionate, sweeping account recorded at the beginning of his career, again with the Philharmonia under Pritchard, with whom he also taped Busoni’s arrangement for piano and orchestra of Liszt’s Rhapsodie Espagnole (a choice doubtless influenced by Busoni’s disciple – and Odgon’s teacher – Egon Petri). Around the same time he recorded a barn-storming Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto and Franck Symphonic Variations, while from 1971 comes a glittering Litolff Scherzo with the CBSO under Louis Frémaux, a best-seller when originally issued. Elsewhere is found Fauré’s Ballade, a Liszt Hungarian Fantasy, Glazunov’s First Piano Concerto and Ogdon’s own concerto. Disc four is devoted to solo piano works, including works by Ogdon himself and Liszt’s Sonata in b minor. All in all, this set is a wonderful and fitting tribute to one of Britain’s greatest pianists.

Reviewed by Anne McAlister