Busoni's Piano Concerto has never become a repertoire piece. It fits awkwardly into a concert programme, due to its length and its choral finale, and the extreme difficulty of its solo writing (discouraging to learn if you're only going to be asked to play it once in a blue moon) cannot quite disguise the fact that it's really more of a symphony with an elaborate piano part than a real concerto. This new recording might just change all that, for like no other performance that I've heard (not even Garrick Ohlsson's stunning account on Telarc, 4/90) it proves what a richly enjoyable piece it is. Without in the least understating the grandeur of the central movement (or its Faustian pointers to Busoni's later style), it finds humour not only of the gallows kind in the first Scherzo (even a touch of irony to its nostalgic centre), while the brilliant tarantella second Scherzo is often very funny indeed: Busoni celebrates his Italian ancestry, but at times bursts into helpless laughter at it as well.
Hamelin obviously loves the work's opportunities for grand romantic pianism and barnstorming, and he has a fine ear for its stark boldness. But it's a piece that also needs absolute conviction from the conductor, and Elder is splendidly eloquent, from the nobly Brahmsian introduction to the full-throatedly sung (but properly distanced: Busoni wanted the chorus to be invisible) finale. Both are at their best in the central Pezzo Serioso, which is grand and grave, but alert to the presence of Chopin as well as Liszt. The recording is warm and spacious, the piano at times just a touch (but forgivably) close. Hyperion reprints Ronald Stevenson's flamboyant programme-notes to one of John Ogdon's pioneering performances of this concerto 40 years ago. 'Effusion is germane to both the music and my writing on it', he says in a semi-apologetic postscript, but his mots are very often justes: 'a sad defeated fanfare on a ruined glory of D major, and a string chord hangs like a breath on the air' is exactly how the end of the first Scherzo sounds in this remarkable performance.'