Kirill Gerstein plays Busoni’s Piano Concerto

The BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo performs Bacewicz's Symphony No. 2 and Busoni's colossus of a Piano Concerto with Kirill Gerstein plus the BBC Symphony Chorus.

Grażyna Bacewicz: Symphony No. 2

Interval

Ferruccio Busoni: Piano Concerto

Kirill Gerstein (piano)
BBC Symphony Chorus (lower voices)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo (conductor)

“Joy and pain interweave in the light of the world…Thousands of years flash by with glory and strength, revealing that which is indestructible”. Extraordinary claims; but then extraordinary is the only word for the heaven-storming choral finale of Ferruccio Busoni’s colossal Piano Concerto: a masterpiece on the scale of a symphony, composed in 1904 by one of Mahler’s greatest fans.

Every performance is a major occasion, demanding a pianist with outsize charisma and fingers of steel. Kirill Gerstein has both – and when he recorded this concerto with Sakari Oramo, Gramophone described the results as “sublime”. Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra open with the supercharged Second Symphony by Grazyna Bacewicz: the dazzling, neglected Polish composer whose music he’s determined to bring into the daylight.

To listen on most smart speakers just say "Ask BBC Sounds to play Radio 3 in Concert"