Rare and Majestic Masterpiece

Okay, I'm nailing my colours to the mast right at the beginning of this post.  This concerto is a masterwork on the same plane as the great piano concerti of Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart.  There --  I said it.  Disagree with me if you like, but that's what I think and how I feel.

Sorry?

Oh, which concerto? 

(Ooops!  My bad....)

The Op. 38 Piano Concerto by Ferrucio Busoni.  Now, here's a rarity indeed.  It's so fiendishly difficult that only a handful of pianists have it in their repertoire.  It's also so challenging for the orchestra that few have time to rehearse it.  Thus, any live performance is an event!  The Concerto is in 5 movements, lasts for 70 minutes (or more), is played nonstop, and includes not only a sizable orchestra but also an offstage male chorus in the finale!  So here we are, back at the third piece for piano, orchestra and chorus which I promised a few days ago.

One reason the Busoni Concerto bears comparison with the great masters named above is the careful thought which the composer put into its organization and structure.  The first, third, and fifth movements are solid, solemn, and powerful -- reflecting the Germanic side of the musical world which Busoni inhabited.  The second and fourth have been appropriately described as "sinister, glittering, Italianate scherzos."  Many themes from the first movement are recalled in the fifth, and also hinted at in the third.  This gives the Concerto a strong organic unity.

Where the Busoni work really resembles the two great concerti of Brahms is in the fact that, like Brahms, Busoni has woven the piano part in many areas fully into the orchestral texture.  The result is the polar opposite of the showy "virtuoso" works so popular in the nineteenth century, where the orchestra has to restrain itself so the soloist has ample time and room to show off.  Busoni's Concerto is certainly a challenge for any virtuoso, but the pianist's technical prowess is nearly always subdued to the needs of the music, rather than the other way around.  As Busoni's biographer, Edward J. Dent, remarked: "It is nearly always the orchestra which seems to be possessed of the composer's most prophetic inspiration. Busoni sits at the pianoforte, listens, comments, decorates, and dreams."  In this scheme, the quiet singing of the offstage male chorus in the final movement is simply another element in the total sound picture, rather than the kind of gigantic spiritual triumph found at the end of choral symphonies by Beethoven, Mahler, and others.

John Ogdon gave the Busoni Concerto its first recording in the 1960s for EMI.  If you can get this pioneering account, you should, for it breathes all the wonder of fresh discovery.  Among more recent recordings, the one to go for is the 1999 Hyperion CD with Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mark Elder.  The rich digital sound allows Busoni's densest textures to come through clearly, and Hamelin clearly is fully in command of the most demonically complex passagework.  There's also a video performance of the Concerto by Hamelin with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra under Osmo Vanska which can be found on YouTube.