Busoni: Piano Concerto in C Major, Op. 39, BV 247 (Live)

Album review

The discography of Ferruccio Busoni's Concerto for Piano is so scant (Hamelkin, Donohoe, Thiollier and Ogdon are among the rare artists to have tackled it) that every new edition is to be welcomed: and this also goes for this recording by Pietro Massa, made in 2008, and now re-released. Busoni's Concerto is a concerto in name only: in reality, it is an immense symphony lasting over an hour, in five movements (the last of which requiring a male choir). The piano often plays solo, but just as often it accompanies the orchestra, almost like a harp, but a little more sonorous - and despite the dizzying array of instruments that are brought to bear, there is no harp in this score, which might explain it... One would think that the composer has drawn inspiration from Mahler's most monumental works, and some interwar modernist pieces, were this Concerto not first performed in 1904 (it's true! 1904! What modernism!), by the Berlin Philharmonic and Karl Muck. This work is exceptionally intricate, brimming over with emotion and orchestral ideas, intense colours, a real masterpiece whose sheer scale alone posed an obstacle to greater fame. The listener will notice that the final choral section is a hymn to the glory of... Allah, in the words of Aladdin from the Thousand and One Nights. It is in the final movement that the piano is integrated into the orchestral texture, no longer playing a solo part. © SM/Qobuz