Ogdon's elegant simplicity in the Fauré Ballade contrasts with his unbridled, breathless dash through the Litolff Scherzo, both alertly backed by Louis Frémaux and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. With the Philharmonia Orchestra on vintage form, John Barbirolli's red-blooded and beautifully balanced conducting unwittingly upstages Ogdon's accomplished but careful playing in the Tchaikovsky First and Franck Symphonic Variations. However, the pianist's imagination takes wing (as do his fingers) in the Liszt Hungarian Fantasy and Spanish Rhapsody (in Busoni's orchestral version), again with Pritchard at the podium.

Ogdon brings prodigious color and tonal variety to Bartók's First Concerto, where the snarling brass and vigorous percussion really hit home courtesy of EMI's vivid, robust sonics. You might not associate Malcolm Sargent with Bartók, yet his sympathetic support proves a welcome surprise in this previously unpublished recording. Also notable is how well and idiomatically Ogdon responds to the Glazunov First Concerto's Romantic riches (check out the fiery first-movement cadenza).

Perhaps Ogdon's own Piano Concerto and Piano Sonata reveal more about the facility with which the composer/pianist grasps the surface styles of Bartók, early Prokofiev, and Sorabji than they attest to a genuine creative force at work. I find Ogdon's Theme and Variations that opens Disc 4 more interesting from a textural, harmonic, and formal standpoint.

As a Liszt player, Ogdon could be brilliant or boring, sometimes within the same work. The B minor sonata's lyrical sections tend to dawdle, yet the bravura writing inspires Ogdon to swashbuckling heights that would humble many of today's virtuoso hotshots; the Fifteenth Hungarian Rhapsody's declamatory chords are powerful and decisive, yet its rapid filigree falls flat; the first Valse Oubliée hovers between caressing sensitivity and glib rushing, while En Ręve is calm and fleet, as though Ogdon is throwing the piece away. Everything comes together for a propulsive, insightful, and technically mesmerizing rendition of the late and obscure Csárdás Macabre. All told, this is a fascinating if uneven anthology that surely will capture the attention of Ogdon's admirers.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com