Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

The son of a German pianist and an Italian clarinettist, who married a Swede and taught in Finland, Austria, Russia, Germany and Italy: Ferruccio Busoni, one of the greatest piano virtuosos of all time, was a committed European. For most of the time he lived in Berlin, where he directed an exemplary new music series from 1902 to 1909, in which he also presented his own piano concerto – a monumental, pantheistic drama of redemption whose choral finale sets verses by Goethe’s Danish contemporary Adam Oehlenschläger: “Raise your hearts to the eternal power, feel Allah near you, behold his work!” Of course, Busoni himself was at the concert grand for the premiere on 10 November 1904: the complexities of the piano score put any Rachmaninov concerto in the shade. Nevertheless, in Busoni’s “Skyscraper Concerto” (as he called it), the orchestral and solo parts are inextricably interwoven, which makes the work less of a virtuoso concerto than a choral symphony with an obligatory piano. Igor Levit, one of the most brilliant pianists of his generation and, like Busoni, a committed European, will tackle the particular challenges of this rarely performed work. He will be accompanied – under the conductor Sir Antonio Pappano – by the orchestra and choir of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, who are making their first appearance as guests at Musikfest Berlin. Before the interval they will perform Arnold Schönberg’s tone poem “Verklärte Nacht” (Transfigured Night) based on the poem of that title by Richard Dehmel: highly expressive music, in whose ecstatic outbursts of colour one can hear the mental exaltations of the fin de siècle.