Worldly pianist to charm Machias

Brenda Lucas Ogdon sat regally on the porch of Norma Marin’s home in Addison, perched on the edge of a couch and looking out at the ocean through a bank of windows perched on the edge of the land.

“It’s like a boat,” she says, sipping a glass of Perrier.

Ogdon, a world-class pianist from London, England, is Marin’s guest at Cape Split Place for the month of August. But her stay isn’t all sightseeing and porch sitting. Since she arrived, she has practiced three times a day, first in preparation for a concert at Colby College last week, and now for the John Marin Memorial Concert, which will take place at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 19, at the Centre Street Congregational Church in Machias.

The performance, sponsored by Machias Bay Chamber Concerts, will not only pay homage to renowned painter John Marin, who died 50 years ago at Cape Split, but it also will raise money to help restore the church’s historic Stevens Tracker organ. Ogdon agreed to waive her fee for the fund-raiser.

“I think it’s a wonderful thing to do for a small town in Maine,” said Norma Marin, who was so impressed with Ogdon’s piano playing on a 2001 cruise that she asked her to take part in both concerts.

Ogdon, who is in her mid-60s, last appeared in the United States in a 1992 recital at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She has enjoyed considerable success both as a soloist and as part of a piano duo with her late husband, John Ogdon.

At 16, she entered the Royal Northern College of Music (formerly the Royal Manchester College of Music), where she met John, a classmate who became a composer and internationally known concert pianist.

At 21, she made her professional debut with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and went on to tour the world as her husband’s two-piano partner.

Among the highlights of her career was a tour of the Soviet Union with John and a concert at Royal Festival Hall, where she played with her husband and Andre Previn. The queen and Duke of Edinburgh were in the audience.

“I remember Andre saying, ‘I don’t want any bowing and curtsying here,'” Ogdon said, smiling. “We had to do that, particularly in those days. That was a very special evening.”

Since John Ogdon’s death in 1989, Brenda has worked to promote his compositions, but she has also resurrected her solo work. She performed in Hong Kong at the time of the return of the colony to China, and a review of the concert called her “a charming and distinguished pianist.”

She will charm audiences at the Machias concert, which features the “American” sonata by John Ogdon, a three-movement piece inspired by country music in the Midwest that ends with a “barn dance” finale.

“It could’ve been from a movie in the ’50s,” Ogdon said. “He was very keen on American movies.”

The program also includes works by Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and Lizst, several of Ogdon’s favorites.

“I love Bach and I love Lizst and Mozart,” she said. “I’m quite conventional, really.”

Her playing is anything but. The Newark Post hailed her “technical brilliance” during a performance of Lizst’s concert etudes and Rachmaninov preludes. But her technique resonates with the spirit of the music – it’s not simply notes played flawlessly, there’s something more.

That brilliance has become clear to Norma Marin, who has sat for hours, transfixed, listening to Ogdon practice on John Marin’s Steinway piano.

“Of course it’s her very own spirit, but also her approach to piano is quite different because she’s from Europe and she’s traveled all over the world,” Marin said. “It’s just lovely to have Brenda here because it’s just like a breath of fresh air.”

Brenda Lucas Ogdon will perform at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 19, at the Centre Street Congregational Church in Machias. Tickets cost $12 and are available by calling Billie Ingalls at 255-3889.1