Read on to discover all about the Busoni Piano Concerto... perhaps the most difficult piano piece ever written...
Busoni Piano Concerto: The Work
Gargantuan in scope and scale, the Busoni Piano Concerto is ferociously complex – demanding both virtuosic solos and expansive accompaniment from its pianist – and structured in a way that makes Beethoven and Mahler seem cautiously unambitious. This is a work that clambers past everything that had been put in place during the late-19th century, reaching the summit of Romanticism where the views are dazzling, the armchairs are squishy and the refreshment is whatever you want it to be. In 1904, when the Piano Concerto was first performed, more is more, and Ferruccio Busoni is a majestic maximalist.
Nature and mysticism... What was the inspiration for the Busoni Piano Concerto?
In a letter to his wife sent in 1902, Busoni includes a sketch to illustrate the Piano Concerto pictorially. It features contrasting buildings set among sun rays and a leafy forest. The music, he writes, is ‘represented by architecture, landscape and symbolism. The three buildings are the first, third and fifth movements. In between come the two “living” ones: Scherzo and Tarantella; the first, a nature-play, represented by a miraculous flower and bird; the second by Vesuvius and cypress trees. The sun rises over the entrance; a seal is fastened to the door of the end building. The winged being quite at the end is taken from [Adam] Oehlenschläger’s chorus and represents mysticism in nature.’ The design would later be recreated by the painter Heinrich Vogeler and included as a frontispiece on the published score of the concerto.
That sense of contrasting human awe at both the natural world and the one she created is cemented by a recognition of the unknown. Contemporary mysticism was fashionable; necessary, too, in explaining the still-misunderstood phenomena that compelled the Romantics and irritated the modernists. Busoni’s drawing would become five movements: the first, third and fifth are represented by Graeco-Roman, Egyptian and Babylonian architecture; two and four by the intangible wonder of nature. In this depiction away from the staff, Busoni foreshadows the graphic scores used by Feldman, Ligeti and Cage later on in the 20th century.
A work of epic proportions...
The resulting 70-minute work is the longest piano concerto in the Romantic repertoire (not, as is often claimed, the longest piano work, which is generally considered to be Sorabji’s Opus clavicembalisticum, which clocks in at around four hours). Unlike, say, Feldman or Sorabji, however, duration is a byproduct of complex melodic development, rather than a conceptual element of the composition itself.
When was the Busoni Piano Concerto written and premiered?
Busoni’s Piano Concerto had a long gestation. Composer-pianist Ronald Stevenson, a key advocate of Busoni’s music, suggested that the work can be traced back to an Etude in D flat composed in 1883. The final movement includes a male chorus, singing words from the verse-drama Aladdin by Adam Oehlenschläger, which Busoni had experimented with at an earlier point in his career. Nonetheless, the official composition period is 1902-04, with publication in 1906.
Busoni himself gave the premiere of his concerto in 1904 in the Beethoven-Saal in Berlin with the Berlin Philharmonic and the choir of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church under Karl Muck. The work had been due to be dedicated to William Dayas, an American pianist who was working as a professor at the Royal Manchester College of Music, but he died shortly before the concerto was finished.
Both Dayas and his wife Margaret Vocke had been pupils of Liszt, and recognised Busoni as the next incumbent to the pianist-composer throne. ‘What a pity the Old Man [Liszt] did not hear that!’ Dayas is reported to have said after one of Busoni’s performances. ‘He would have given you his sword and died in peace.’
How is the Busoni Piano Concerto structured?
The present-day pianist Susan Tomes agrees, observing in The Piano magazine that ‘Busoni was the natural heir to Liszt, sharing his virtuoso technique, his talent for composition and his interest in transcribing other composer’s works for piano or using them as the raw material for elaborate fantasies.’ This is heard right from the Prologo e Introito start of the Piano Concerto, which opens with a simple C major melody – having been told just what a groundbreaking work this is, a new listener might be underwhelmed at this point, but patience is encouraged. Busoni builds a long ramp before introducing a second subject, then we’re into a declamatory cadenza, lyrical woodwind melodies with a rippling accompaniment and an itchy, impressive keyboard traversal – we have arrived.
The Pezzo giocoso second movement continues a hero’s celebration, with spirited dances and fast-paced phrases, contrasting with the solemnity of the subsequent four-part Pezzo serioso movement. The tarantella (All’ Italiana) jumps across the keys, spilling melodies on its way to a dizzying cadenza. The canvas is further enlarged for the Cantico, which brings in a male chorus, underlying the symphonic aspects of this extraordinary music – a concerto only in name.
Busoni Piano Concerto: The Best Recording
Marc-André Hamelin (piano)
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Mark Elder
Hyperion CDA67143
The practical requirements of the Busoni Piano Concerto – a chorus and enormous orchestra – on top of the formidable piano part (‘monstrously overwritten’ according to pianist Alfred Brendel) mean it is not widely recorded. Quality is better than quantity, though, and the work is well served by several world-class pianists.
Among this excellent field, Marc-André Hamelin’s 1999 version nudges its way into pole position. The Canadian, a pianist-composer cut from the same cloth as Busoni himself, meets the triumphant themes in the Prologo and the pared-back moments in the Cantico and treats those two impostors just the same. Here, this work becomes more than a musical curiosity: there’s as much tenderness in the slow accompaniments as showmanship in the cadenzas. It’s something that Hamelin gives due consideration – in one interview, he noted that viewing such work as a virtuosic exercise ‘is a little bit like tearing a page off a Gutenberg bible and using it to wrap carrot peels’.
Crystal clear piano even among the orchestral fanfare
His growling dance in the Pezzo giocoso is restrained until the very last moment as the swirling, whirling melodies develop, the Steinway sound always crystal clear even among the orchestral fanfare. Busoni’s Piano Concerto is often described as a ‘choral symphony with obbligato piano’; in this recording, the musical hierarchy is pleasingly in flux, the changing focus carefully observed by conductor Mark Elder.
The extensive, four-part third movement moulds the chorale into more intricate pieces; in the Andante, Hamelin brings out the Chopinesque pianism before moving onto the pulsing Altera Pars, clearly heard under the curtain of horns. There’s more introspection in the subsequent orchestral development, tightly contrasting with the Ultima Pars and its fragments of melody, shimmering scales and Classical conclusion.
The All’ Italiana is a toe-tapping romp through Italian-inspired grand melodies. This is the movement – with seemingly endless endings – that builds to breaking point only to restart the process again. It requires incredible skill from the soloist, and Hamelin has the necessary stamina to make it appear effortless. Though a little more ponderous than some other recordings, the final movement is crowned by the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus, whose finely calibrated vocals bring us to a solemn ecstasy.
Busoni Piano Concerto: Three Other Great Recordings
Garrick Ohlsson (piano)
For those lucky enough to be present, hearing Garrick Ohlsson, who won the Busoni Competition in 1966, perform the Piano Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo at the Barbican in 2014 was an experience to remember. Ohlsson’s 2002 recording with the Cleveland Orchestra and Men’s Chorus conducted by Christoph von Dohnányi is similarly thrilling, as the American pianist blazes, burns and burnishes Busoni in a way that makes 70 minutes fly past. Only the orchestral balance – down to sound quality rather than the conductor – places it behind Hamelin. (Telarc CD80207)
Kirill Gerstein (piano)
In its review of Ohlsson’s 2014 performance, the Guardian reckoned a concert of Busoni’s Piano Concerto to be ‘an irresistible draw, as it’s a piece that seems to come around about as often as Halley’s Comet’. It make sense, therefore, to record such events, and here we have Kirill Gerstein with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Men of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus under Sakari Oramo (again), captured at the orchestra’s own Symphony Hall in 2017. Gerstein is gripping in his attention to detail, while simultaneously considering the shadow of this monolith. (Myrios MYR024)
John Ogdon (piano)
In the aftermath of the premiere, few were willing to go toe-to-toe with the concerto – with the exception of some pianists directly linked to Busoni, such as Egon Petri who gave the first British performance in 1909. However, it later became the calling card of the British pianist John Ogdon, whose unfussy virtuosity shines through in this 1967 version with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Men’s Voices of the John Alldis Choir and Daniell Revenaugh. Recording technology may have improved since then, but Ogdon’s pianism is timeless. (Warner Classics 3724672)
Busoni Piano Concerto: And One To Avoid…
Soloist Noel Mewton-Wood’s liquid touch is frustratingly blurred in this 1948 recording with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Men’s Chorus under Thomas Beecham. Mewton-Wood might have gone on to become a primary player of this work, but tragically he died at 31 by suicide. SOMM recordings made valiant efforts when it reissued the work in 2003 as part of its Beecham series, but this is purely for pond dippers who can brave the murky waters.