It was a tremendous experience performing Sorabji’s Toccata terza again in Madrid. The concert took place on 21 January 2024 in the wonderful acoustics and immersive environment of the Sala Negra, Teatros del Canal, where I played the complete work for the third time.

A complex, two-hour composition consisting of ten movements ranging from two short, 3-minute cadenzas to a 50-minute long passacaglia with 102 variations, Toccata terza (1955) it is based on the simplest possible material – the three-note motif C-G-F – which is transformed in a myriad ways. Another interesting feature of the work is its history – the manuscript and only copy of the work was lost for almost sixty years until, very unexpectedly, it was found in 2019. The score (both the manuscript and my critical edition of it) can be obtained from the Sorabji Archive.

As he did before in “Toccata seconda”, in “Toccata terza” Sorabji looks back to the examples of Bach and Busoni, reinvents them in his own innovative idiom, and expands the concept of the Baroque toccata into a work of monumental proportions.