Busoni Late Piano Music: Marc-André Hamelin

Ferruccio Busoni is still best known as an arranger of Bach, though his transformations of that master's music are sometimes a million miles removed from the familiar handful of works that feature as encores. He also reworked Bizet's Carmen and Indian songs brought to his attention by a former student. Marc-André Hamelin has the pianistic muscle and the intellectual probity to keep implausibility at bay in Busoni's sometimes over-ambitious writing sounding. He's a sure guide to the sets of Elegies and Sonatinas (a choice of title which refers more to scale than ambition), and he has dared to venture into the late Klavierübung, with spectacular results. This wonderful collection will reward Busoni neophytes and aficionados in equal measure. url.ie/4qdb