Busoni's Piano Concerto is renowned for being the longest in the repertory but it hasn't struck me so forcibly before that it's not a minute longer than it needs to be. Its ideas are big—try timing any of its principal themes—and in this reading one is continually surprised, looking at a watch or the display on the CD player, at how much time has elapsed. The first movement, after all, is no more than an expansive exposition of two themes: does it really play for nearly 16 minutes? This performance has in Mark Elder a conductor accustomed, after his work on the English National Opera's Doktor Faust, to thinking on a Busonian time-scale. It was also recorded in the grand acoustic of the Royal Albert Hall in London during a Prom concert in 1988, and there is a distinct sense that the players are aware of a space around them that is big enough for the music.
Peter Donohoe responds magnificently to the elbow-room that hall and conductor allow him, giving an organ-like resonance to the great 'Cathedral' theme and loosing torrents of virtuoso pianism in the two scherzos, but knowing very well how finely that vast space responds to poised quietness and solemnity. His and Elder's account of the concluding ''Cantico'' is the most magical that I have heard, despite the chorus drowning the woodwind a little. It is a live performance, of course, and one must expect little imperfections of that kind, but they are a very small price to pay for a reading in which the cumulative power of the piece is so strongly felt.
Another minor reservation concerns balance: there is a slight feeling once or twice that the orchestra is being held back to allow the soloist through, and, just as infrequently, the piano sound takes on a certain hardness in its very fullest passages. But one only has to compare this new recording with its most recent rival (Ohlsson and Dohnanyi on Telarc/Conifer) to hear what the latter lacks: it has sound of magnificent dynamic range and, although recorded in a fair-size hall, has evidently had all the resources of a studio lavished upon tricky problems of balance, but with its highlighted soloist and its very clarity it sounds less of a real performance than Donohoe's and Elder's.
In fact all the comparative versions listed above have a great deal going for them: Ogdon's (EMI) eloquent grandeur, marred only by a fluff or two, a conductor not quite in the same class as Elder, Dohnanyi or Herbig and a recording that is showing its age slightly (1968); Ohlsson's toweringly exciting technique and piano sound (but the recording won't let him retreat to an accompanying role as he should at the outset of the finale); Banfield's (CPO/Priory) deep seriousness and fine technique and his partnership with a highly imaginative conductor. For a performance, though, that insists that you listen to the work entire because the artists have conceived it as an entirety, Donohoe and Elder have, I think, the edge. Their concentration and pacing are seamless. The loud applause and shouts of enthusiasm at the end (a few quiet coughs and a squeaking door aside, the audience is otherwise absorbedly quiet) do not come as a shock; indeed I felt like joining in.'