Busoni: Piano Concerto

John Ogdon (piano), Royal PO/Daniell Revenaugh, New Philharmonia Orchestra/ Frederick Prausnitz, Thomas Adès (piano) EMI Classics Gemini 456 2342 (2 CDs) ****

It was John Ogdon's 1968 recording of Busoni's 1904 Piano Concerto that really put this piano concerto to end all piano concertos on the map. The piece is nearly 70 minutes long (more, in some recordings), has a choral finale setting words from Danish writer Adam Oehlenschläger's Aladdin, and is not greatly concerned with the conventions of virtuoso display. It's sometimes viewed as a symphony with piano rather than as a concerto proper, and it's always tended to polarise opinion (Alfred Brendel condemned it as "monstrously overwritten"). Ogdon's consistently persuasive account of this intriguingly grandiose score is here usefully coupled with three other orchestral works and four solo piano pieces. See url.ie/57cs