It’s very easy to churn out clichés about Busoni’s Piano Concerto.
It’s like no other work. It’s too long. It’s a synthesis of
German discipline and Latin passion. And so on. The trouble
with clichés is that they are usually true, and it’s only repeating
them that diminishes their effect. Richard Whitehouse, in the
very fine English essay that accompanies this Naxos issue –
there is original Italian documentation too – refers darkly
to the work’s being “the longest piano concerto to have been
heard in public”. I’d be interested to know how many piano concertos
longer than this one have been composed but never performed.
I’m sure someone reading this will be able to enlighten me.
So the work is obviously very long, but too long? How long is
too long? How long would be acceptable? Few people would say
that Brahms’ Second Concerto was too long, but half an hour
of music would be lost in cutting Busoni down to Brahms’ size,
and this would transform the work into something totally different.
Whether the work seems too long depends, to a large extent,
on the quality of the performance. Many a shorter work can seem
too long in an indifferent performance. By the same token, the
performance can bring out, to a greater or lesser extent, the
fact that the music often sounds something like Brahms, often
a lot like Liszt, and even, at certain points in the enormous
middle movement in particular, sometimes like Chopin. And yet
each movement has moments where the music is undeniably and
unmistakeably Italian, with tarantella rhythms and even real
Italian folk themes. If all this were not enough to support
the thesis that the work is unlike any other, let us mention
the final movement, where a male chorus, offstage, sings a hymn-like
ode apparently extolling the indestructible force of human creativity,
generation after generation, age after age.
For many years the only modern recording of this monumental
work was by that marvellous pianist long gone and sadly missed,
John Ogdon. Since then several others have appeared, of which
this, by Italian forces, is the latest. Roberto Cappello clearly
has a formidable technical armoury at his disposal, as what
might seem the inevitable splashy moments are both rare and
insignificant. Listening to the work without a score, the orchestra
seems to play well enough from a technical point of view too.
At a few seconds short of eighty minutes, this is probably among
the longest performances of the work, and to a question evoked
above – does the work seem long in performance? – one regretfully
replies in the affirmative, though perhaps not for the most
obvious of reasons. There are very few moments that seem particularly
slow, and amongst them, the close of the middle movement, for
example, the playing is most eloquent and convincing. No, the
problem is that the performance has a relentlessness about it
which rather encourages the view that the work is little more
than a barnstorming virtuoso vehicle. The playing, especially
but not exclusively from the soloist, is often inflexible and
unyielding, and certainly lacks delicacy in places where other
performers have certainly found that quality. And, strange to
report, now that excellence in recorded sound is taken more
or less for granted, the recording doesn’t help. One hears at
the outset that the orchestral sound is flat and one-dimensional,
pale, lacking in depth, almost synthetic. Unfortunately the
problem extends to the piano too, harsh and clangy.
This all makes for a rather tiring eighty minutes, but it needn’t
be so. Garrick Ohlsson’s performance on Telarc (CD80207) is
very highly thought of in many quarters. I have never heard
this performance, but each of the two I know is preferable to
this new one. Ogdon’s reading was first issued in 1968 (EMI)
and is marvellous in every way. It was a pioneering performance
at the time, but it is nonetheless remarkably assured and convincing.
Ogdon finds more variety of tone colour and mood than does Cappello
here, and the orchestral support from the Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra conducted by Daniel Revenaugh – a name unknown to
me outside of this performance – is very fine, as is the contribution
of the men of the John Alldis Choir. Then, in 1999, appeared
the clincher, Marc-André Hamelin’s performance on Hyperion,
with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted
by Mark Elder. It was only reluctantly that I accepted the newcomer,
but accepted it I did, as it is finer even than Ogdon, mainly
because the performers find yet more variety of mood, even to
the point of humour, amidst the tumultuous cascades of notes,
yet without sacrificing in the least the ferocious virtuosity
that is so central to the work. It was when I heard this performance
for the first time that I became convinced of the truth of that
other cliché so often churned out about Busoni’s Concerto; that,
flawed though it may be, it is a masterpiece.
William Hedley
See also review by Dan
Morgan
Roberto Cappello (piano)
