Mapping out a Strategy

Serious Music got big and very philosophical at the end of the 19th century. Mahler's Symphonies are just one example. A friend of Gustav, the piano virtuoso Ferruccio Busoni also wanted to try the waters of big, serious minded compositions with his Concerto in C Op. 39. This massive work stretches more than an hour and has the pianist work hard just about all the time. The music starts before one's birth and takes us through head strong youth, a growing maturity and success, to finally old age and the recognition of the infinite and a dream of existence in the afterlife. To help explain the path of the concerto Busoni sketched out an architectural drawing that shows us a symbolic map of this musical journey.

On the Piano this Sunday hear the second part of this amazing work, with one of the great performances of this highly challenging work when John Ogden takes on one of the supreme high water marks of Romanticism this Sunday afternoon at 5 on KPAC & KTXI.

host, Randy Anderson