The news that Benjamin Grosvenor will be playing Busoni’s Piano Concerto at the BBC Proms on 5 August, to mark 100 years since the composer’s death, set me thinking about the select group of current pianists who have performed this gargantuan work. Grosvenor first performed it in Iceland in February and gave further performances in Berlin. Before his Proms performance, the previous UK performances were by Garrick Ohlsson (at the Barbican in 2014); Marc-André Hamelin (at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, in 1999 – Hamelin has long championed this work and recorded it for Hyperion, and performed it this summer, at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr in June); and Peter Donohoe (at the Proms in 1988, a performance later issued on EMI). Kirill Gerstein is another who has recorded it – live with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo in 2017, on Myrios – and he is also performing it this year, in Germany, Paris and London (Barbican, 1 November – after two UK performances in 35 years there will be two in three months). Igor Levit has been playing it in recent years, including giving the San Francisco premiere last summer – his scheduled London performance in May 2020 was kiboshed by the pandemic. Piers Lane played it three times, including at Carnegie Hall in 2012. Others who have performed it in recent years include Giovanni Bellucci and Carlo Grante.

To learn this hugely demanding work is a mammoth undertaking, potentially for only a handful of performances. With its 70-minute duration, large forces and male-voice choir, the Busoni Concerto is never going to be a repertoire staple, and we should celebrate the fact that such fantastic pianists are playing it and, relatively speaking, so many of us will be able to hear it in concert.

Benjamin Grosvenor plays Busoni’s Piano Concerto at the BBC Proms on 5 August 2024