The pianist Edna Iles, who knew Medtner, said that he was very unhappy if anybody performed his music without consulting him beforehand, but he didn't place any sort of ban on it happening.
Of course there are instances of bad performances having a devastating effect on a composer...the best known being Glazunov's incompetent reading of Rachmaninov's 1st Symphony which led to Rachmaninov having a nervous breakdown.
I have several scores of Sorabji's piano works in my collection. Delighted that the subtitle of the Valse Fantaisie was "Hommage a Johann Strauss" I began work on it only to find that the immense amount of effort needed to learn it was in inverse proportion to the pleasure the music gave me so I gave up the endeavour after a couple of weeks.
Certainly Sorabji's music makes tremendous demands on the performer so it's no wonder that he didn't want to leave it in the hands of less-than top-rate musicians. Glances at programmes of some recent performances and participants suggest that, since his death, it has suffered this fate !
He required that people seek his permission before public performance - as was his right under British copyright law. This “ban” lasted , under various forms, from around 1938? until the about 1976. Wikipedia’s Sorabji has a good exposition of this. So does the Sorabji Archive: http://www.sorabji-archive.co.uk/biography/biography.php .
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