Busoni
Piano Concerto Kirill Gerstein (piano); Men of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus; Boston Symphony Orchestra/sakari Oramo Myrios MYR024 71:29 mins
Busoni’s Germanic leanings as a composer and in aesthetics, especially later in life, have tended to overshadow the profound debt his epic Piano Concerto (completed 1904) owes to turn-of-the-20th-century Russia (via Liszt) – most especially Scriabin. The fact that Busoni, having won the inaugural Anton Rubinstein Competition, found working in 1890 Russia uncongenial clearly didn’t isolate him from an awareness of the emerging younger generation.
Interestingly, it was Scriabindevotee John Ogdon, who made the first notable commercial recording of the Busoni (Emi/warner, 1967), and in many ways his incandescent pianism has never been equalled on disc. Subsequent recordings, of which there have been barely a dozen, have tended towards dignifying and ennobling Busoni’s exuberant invention, which makes this new recording (captured ‘live’ in Symphony Hall, Boston, in March 2017) all the more arresting in terms of its exotically-perfumed vibrancy.
Sakari Oramo brings an almost Svetlanov-like sense of freeflowing intensity to the opening ‘Prologo e Introito’, so that by the time Kirill Gerstein launches forth with his colossal arpeggiations, the heightened sense of expectancy is palpable. The swirling bravado of the ensuing ‘Pezzo giocoso’ verges on the demonic, giving Busoni’s ‘playful’ instruction a gleefully sardonic twist, setting up a darkerthan-usual take on the central ‘Pezzo serioso’. Gerstein sustains the high interpretative temperature in the Tarantella, and although the Bostonians might conceivably have entered into the fray with even greater alacrity here, the choral finale works itself up into a state of near-frenzy. Definitely one to place alongside established favourites by Ogdon, Peter Donohoe (also EMI/ Warner) and Marc-andré Hamelin (Hyperion). Julian Haylock PERFORMANCE ★★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★