Day 259
Busoni: Piano concerto
John Ogdon
John Aldis Choir
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Daniell Revenaugh
This concerto has two main claims to fame. First is it perhaps the longest piano concerto ever written (this performance lasts nearly 70 mins) and secondly because it includes a part for offstage male chorus in the last movement. I'm not conscious of having heard any of Busoni's music before so I wasn't sure what to expect from this work. I imagined that it would be rather intense and mysterious with philosophical overtones but it was nothing like that. To be honest I found it a complete rag-bag of a piece with no overall coherence. The first movement was largely Brahmsian in style - with an absurdly long orchestral introduction before the solo piano came in for the first time - and else where there were traces of Liszt and of Russian music. There was even what I thought was a very heavy handed attempt to write in a light hearted elegant French style. That did not work at all - much better to leave that sort of thing to Saint- Säens!. As for the choral finale I had no idea what he was trying to achieve. For a long time he seemed to have forgotten that he was writing a piano concerto because the solo instrument was conspicuously silent. There was some quite effective music here on its own terms but it seems completely out of place. And the movement was spoilt by the end, which was almost embarrassingly gauche.
As will be clear from the above this is not a work I will be returning to - I thought it was awful. It has its admirers so perhaps it is just me, but I really can't see what all of the fuss is about. Reading about the composer I get the impression that his later music is in a more developed style - perhaps one day I will try again, but for the moment this goes down as one of the most disappointing pieces I have listened to in this series.
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