ahaha am also flicking through Gulistan.
Anyway....... everyone says "In the Hot House" is Sorabji's easiest piece, although I don't really think it's a very good piece of music. Check out his Quasi-Habanera Op. 8 or his In the Light of Harpsichord technique, both recorded by Habermann, and conveniently on the same disc even :O There are also several late pieces that are very short in length you should check into, and some of his large-scale works have movements that are entirely doable, like the 100 Transcendental Studies, the Symphonic Variations (good luck with the score on that though) and even the Opus Clavicembalisticum (first movement). There are also some very-difficult-but-playable pieces that will be more rewarding if you're up to it (if you're BORED with Prokofiev maybe you are so might as well mention them) like the Sonata No. 1 or the Prelude, Interlude et Fugue. There are also some transcriptions that aren't as nasty as his original works on stuff by Ravel, Rimsky-Korsakov etc.
Thre is little if anything to add to this excellent advice. The only observations I would make here are as follows (and please forgive any repetition in those that partly echo "soliloquy" here).
Many of the
Frammenti Aforistichi (there are three sets, respectively of 104, 20 and 4) are simply so very aphoristic that, beyond mere intriguing gestural suggestion, they don't give a great deal of idea about what Sorabji is like when he really gets going; each needs to be performed as a complete set to make any real sense. The Ravel transcriptions (two of the
Rapsodie Espagnole)are very difficult in places - occasionally impractically so (which is uncharacteristic of Sorabji); his other transcriptions - the two Bach ones from the 1940s, the Three Pastiches (1922) and Pasticcio Capriccioso (1933) and finally that of the closing scene from Strauss's
Salome are all better and, although none is at all easy to play, their difficulties are never superhuman. The First Sonata is also a good choice - no walk in the park for the pianist, but a fine, if inevitably immature, piece nonetheless.
In the Houthouse is fine as far as it goes, but its principal significance is that of a brief hint at the kind of far more elaborate noctural piano pieces he was later to compose. Two brief works not mentioned by "soliloquy" from the 1920s are the
Fragment: Prelude and Fugue and
Fragment, neither of which is especially difficult. If one is looking for a substantial (though not enormous) work of mediunm difficulty (in specifcally Sorabjian terms of difficulty, that is!), his unfinished Passacaglia in the completion by Alexander Abercrombie could be a good starting point. For shorter works that are not of transcendental difficulty, I suggest the two pieces based on stories of the supernatural by M R James -
Quaere Reliqua Hujus Materiei Inter Secretiora and
St Bertrand de Comminges (both from the early 1940s) and his final major work of all,
Passeggiata Arlecchinesca (1981-82). I'd be inclined to steer well clear of
Le Jardin Parfumé,
Djami and especially
Gulistan initially - wonderful as they all are - because they are extremely difficult and strenuous to play intelligently at the almost exclusively low dynamic levels that they explore - though they're well worth the trouble for the more experienced Sorabji pianist. Last but not least, let's not forget dear old
Fantaisie Espagnole!...
Best,
Alistair
Topic: Attempting Sorabji