Archive of the month, August 2009

John Manduell, then Principal of the RNCM issued the following notice on hearing of the death of John Ogdon:

'...John Ogdon was without question one of the most distinguished students to emerge from the former Royal Manchester College of Music (RMCM) where he studied as a pianist with Iso Elinson, Claud Biggs and Gordon Green and as a composer with Richard Hall.  The RMCM awarded him a Fellowship of the College in 1962 and he was subsequently created a Fellow of this College in 1986.

As a pianist John Ogdon will be remembered for his astonishing capacity to encompass the most difficult and challenging works with apparent aplomb.  It is rightly said that he was frequently at his best when the challenges were greatest.  He met these by a phenomenal capacity for sight reading, a prodigious technique and an instinctive and wide ranging intellect.  Whilst his playing became in the later years occasionally unpredictable it was never less than engaging and often consummately masterful.

That one of the areas in which he especially excelled should have been that of contemporary music was perhaps natural for a musician who was also an extremely gifted composer.  Whether writing on a broad scale as in his Piano Concerto and his Symphony or in a limited medium as in his Sonata for Solo Violin, John Ogdon's music combined powerful logic with telling simplicity and an apparently irrepressible capacity for invention.

...John Ogdon was an infinitely gentle person, embarrassed by praise....  He will be sorely missed but we are all infinitely the richer for his life and his art.'

Extract from John's Theme and Variations, written in 1966 and dedicated to Ashkenazy

Front page of John's Themes from Amadeus, dedicated to his wife, Brenda (ref. JO/009)

Extract from John's Themes from Amadeus (ref. JO/009)

For further information about the Ogdon Archive or any other aspect of  the RNCM Archive collections, please contact Mary Ann Davison, Archivist/Records Manager, on t 0161 9075211 or e This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .