Salonen & Levit Scale Busoni’s Masterpiece Tickets

Perhaps the most, or only, conventional element of Busoni’s Piano Concerto is its title. Nearly 75-minutes in length with five movements—the last featuring a men’s chorus—and one of the largest orchestras of the entire genre, it requires nothing less than a herculean effort by the soloist not to mention the more than 100 other musicians performing.

Pianist Igor Levit, a noted champion of Busoni who has called the concerto, “a piece to widen your curse words repertoire,” rises to its considerable challenges. Together with LA Phil Conductor Laureate Esa-Pekka Salonen and men of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, he explores Busoni’s grand utopian vision. Reviewing Levit and Salonen’s 2023 performance of the concerto in San Francisco, the Los Angeles Times raved “...the communal exultation of Levit, Salonen, the orchestra and chorus captured something so large and impractically visionary, something that had so much to say about the society to which we aspire, that one could walk out of the concert hall convinced we can make a difference.”