Decades can pass without an opportunity to hear a live performance of Ferrucio Busoni’s pantheistic 1904 piano concerto. At 75 minutes in length, the ferocious five-movement monster is a taxing play and an equally taxing listen. It requires heroic stamina from the musicians, and no small financial outlay by an orchestra on both a soloist and a chorus. The extravagance does not end there, since the concerto itself is prodigal in its utopian ambition and difficulty.
But here, in the centenary of the composer’s death, was the concerto’s second London outing in less than four months. Compared with the Albert Hall, where Benjamin Grosvenor and Edward Gardner powered through Busoni’s score in this summer’s Proms, the drier acoustic of the Barbican Hall provided a more clinical sound. There was no opportunity either, unlike in the Albert Hall, for the male chorus to remain invisible as they sang the work’s serenely effective setting of the Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger’s mystical verses.
