EDITOR’S NOTE
Backing Busoni
The news that Benjamin Grosvenor will be playing Busoni’s Piano Concerto at this year’s BBC Proms in August, to mark 100 years since the composer’s death, set me thinking about the select group of current pianists who have performed this gargantuan work. Grosvenor first performed it in Iceland in February and gave further performances in Berlin. Before his Proms performance later this year, the previous UK performances were by Garrick Ohlsson (at the Barbican in 2014); Marc-André Hamelin (at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, in 1999 – Hamelin has long championed this work and recorded it for Hyperion, and he will also perform it this summer, at the KlavierFestival Ruhr in June); and Peter Donohoe (at the Proms in 1988, a performance later issued on EMI). Kirill Gerstein is another who has recorded it – live with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo in 2017, on Myrios – and he is also performing it this year, in Germany, Paris and London (Barbican, 1 November – after two UK performances in 35 years there will be two in three months). Igor Levit has been playing it in recent years, including giving the San Francisco premiere last summer – his scheduled London performance in May 2020 was kiboshed by the pandemic. Piers Lane played it three times, including at Carnegie Hall in 2012. Others who have performed it in recent years include Giovanni Bellucci and Carlo Grante.
To learn this hugely demanding work is a mammoth undertaking, potentially for only a handful of performances. With its 70-minute duration, large forces and male-voice choir, the Busoni Concerto is never going to be a repertoire staple, and we should celebrate the fact that such fantastic pianists are playing it and, relatively speaking, so many of us will be able to hear it in concert.
From one rarely played epic to another, the Dutch pianist Daan Vandewalle has recorded Sorabji’s Opus clavicembalisticum, and on page 32 he presents some interesting thoughts on performing this vast … well, curiosity, monstrosity, masterpiece? Elsewhere, and on lighter territory, Ates¸ Orga offers a magisterial survey of Liszt’s
Venezia e Napoli on record. For anyone in need of a burst of sunshine, this sparkling work will transport you to warmer climes. Wishing you all a happy, music-filled summer. Tim Parry, Editor
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