Busoni: Piano Concerto

Chronique

When confronted by Ferruccio Busoni's immense, five-movement Piano Concerto, Op. 39, listeners may either flee from its enormity and bombast, or yield to the music and hope for some great post-Romantic revelation: there is no other choice with this monumental, extravagant, and amazingly overblown work. Scored for piano and large orchestra with a men's chorus in the finale, and running to nearly 70 minutes in length, this is not a conventional piano concerto at all, and it has a spotty performance and recording history, no doubt due to Busoni's unusual demands. This CD is a historical reissue of the 1956 concert recording by pianist Gunnar Johansen and the Northwest German Radio Orchestra, Hamburg, conducted by Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt; as such, its appeal is limited by its AAD sound and irritating background noises, but perhaps holds some interest for the performance, which is indefatigable, virtuosic, and quite impressive for a recording project of the time, when such gargantuan pieces were seldom ventured. However, the piece itself is one of the most bloated works in the repertoire, a puffed-up, pretentious farrago of arpeggios, and thundering chords, octaves, and runs, striving to be the pianistic equivalent of Mahler's Second Symphony, though utterly lacking that work's originality, depth, gravitas, or majesty. In the end, this exhausting CD is a curio for Busoni specialists, but not an essential item for the average listener.

© TiVo