John Ogdon in Rare Recital from Moscow in 1986

There is a flood of Soviet-era material coming out of Russia under the current Melodiya label along with other labels. Evidently, one of them will release some of late John Ogdon recitals from Moscow in good sound.
Here is a live recital with John Ogdon in Great Hall, Moscow from 1986:

Program:

Ravel – Ondine from ‘Gaspard de la Nuit’

Liszt – Sonata in B Minor

Debussy – La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin

Liszt – Mephisto Waltz No.1

Liszt – Valse Oubliee

Debussy – La Danse de Puck

“a genius of enormous sensitivity and very great humour”
– Sir Peter Maxwell Davies

John Ogdon was awarded joint first prize at the 1962 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. It was an extraordinary enough achievement to prompt front-page headlines even in his home country, and it propelled Ogdon and his fellow gold medallist, Vladimir Ashkenazy, into stellar (if very different) careers. Ogdon was, by any normal standards, an unusual keyboard phenomenon. The remarkable catholicity of his repertoire went hand in hand with a staggering technique and a legendary sight-reading ability. He could be presented with the most complex score and deliver a flawless performance after giving it only the briefest of glances; indeed, his students enjoyed testing this astonishing gift by placing full orchestral scores before him. During one recording session late in life, Ogdon was persuaded to play through a piece he had not come across before; after a brief perusal of the score, he began. At one point the page-turner deliberately turned two pages at once. Undeterred, Ogdon continued to play the correct text as if nothing had happened.

John Ogdon was born in Mansfield Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire, UK and studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music from 1945. His teachers included Claude Biggs, Denis Matthews, Gordon Green and Egon Petri. In composition he joined the Manchester New Music Group, which included fellow Manchester contemporaries Birtwistle, Goehr and Maxwell Davies amongst its members. ln 1958, Ogdon made his London debut playing the Busoni Piano Concerto at the Proms. He came to international attention when he won the Liszt prize in Budapest in 1961 and the first prize in the 1962 Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition jointly with Vladimir Ashkenazy. Ogdon was equally at home with the classics and in modern repertoire but he was perhaps most renowned for championing the music of the 20th Century British composers. In addition to first performances of numerous works by the Manchester New Music Group, he pioneered first performances of works by Elgar, Rawsthorne Tippett. At the same time, he explored much neglected music from the late Romantic period. He was a formidable exponent of Alkan, Busoni, Rachmaninov, Scriabin and Schoenberg. He never forgot Liszt and was one of the first players to revive almost forgotten pieces by the composer. He also mastered the two piano repertoire with Brenda Lucas, whom he married in 1960. Ogdon leaves an invaluable legacy of recordings made over a span of 30 years.

Complete discography