Busoni: Piano Concerto

This has to be our Romantic Piano Concerto for the millennium!

The Busoni concerto, with its five movements, choral finale and a length of over 70 minutes, is surely the most grandiose ever written. But this is no over-ambitious monster; Busoni was one of the greatest pianists the world has known, but he was also a great intellectual with very strong views on art and culture. This work is the masterpiece of his middle years, more of a symphony in the breadth and scope of its ideas, but at the same time almost casually requiring the most formidable technical ability from the soloist. There is no doubt that this is one of music's major neglected masterpieces.

Marc-André Hamelin needs no introduction as a champion of the greatest challenges in the piano literature. Here he is joined by Mark Elder who has a particular reputation as a Busoni conductor. He conducted this work with Peter Donohoe in their famed Proms performance of 1988 and he has also conducted Busoni's rarely performed magnum opus 'Doctor Faust' at ENO.

CDA67143  71 minutes 44 seconds
GRAMOPHONE EDITOR'S CHOICE
CLASSIC CD 100 GREATEST DISCS OF THE DECADE
‘Another awe-inspiring feat from this prodigiously virtuosic Canadian … like no other performance that I've heard it proves what a richly enjoyable piece it is … a dazzling disc. If any pian ...
‘Busoni makes ridiculous demands on pianists, but in Marc-André Hamelin's hands, it all sounds perfectly reasonable. It isn't: it's noble, hilarious, impressive and gloriously over the top’ (BBC Musi ...
‘The biggest blockbuster of them all. Mark Elder and the CBSO support Hamelin to the hilt and the result does full justice to one of the mightiest epics of the piano repertoire’ (The Times)