On May 7, 1824, Beethoven’s Ninth premiered in Vienna. Deaf, defiant, and incandescent, he conducted to a hall he could not hear. The audience wept. A singer turned him around to show the ovation.
Two centuries later, on a dusky spring night in Kolkata, a city half a world away, listened again — not to a full orchestra, but to one man who made a piano sing, roar, and remember.
From Verona to the concert hall of the Calcutta School of Music, pianist Daniele Buccio brought with him a unique proposition: Beethoven’s nine symphonies, not performed by an orchestra, but on solo piano, through the famously intricate transcriptions by Franz Liszt.
“Franz Liszt’s transcriptions of the nine symphonies by Beethoven attest a fundamental achievement in the art of recreating orchestral timbres on the piano,” Buccio said, adding, “The inexhaustible possibilities of this particular research are extremely meaningful for every instrumentalist.”
Buccio didn’t posture. He arrived, bowed, and sat with the quiet precision of a clockmaker — then unleashed chaos and beauty in equal measure
While the absence of an orchestra meant sacrificing certain dynamics and timbral variations, the gains were in clarity and intimacy. Without brass or strings, the structures of the symphonies became more apparent — the harmonic movement, the motivic development, the pacing of transitions.
Liszt’s transcriptions are not universally performed, in part because of their demands and in part because of their niche appeal. But in Kolkata, this performance marked a thoughtful return to the repertoire that often sits quietly in archives or on shelves. It allowed students and listeners alike to reimagine Beethoven not as a monument, but as a composer whose ideas can be refracted in many forms.
“It is possible to conceive a continuity between the orchestral timbres and the ones that it is possible to imagine from the piano,” Buccio explained, when asked about the tension between orchestral grandeur and pianistic intimacy.
Buccio, ever the scholar-performer, didn’t posture. He arrived, bowed, and sat with the quiet precision of a clockmaker — then unleashed chaos and beauty in equal measure. This writer attended Buccio’s traversal of Beethoven’s Fourth and Fifth Symphonies. Played back-to-back, they offered contrast in temperament and construction. One, often overlooked and understated. The other, among the most recognisable in all of Western music.
‘Every symphony poses decisive choices for the performer, also in relation to the orchestral performance tradition,’ Buccio said
Buccio, known for his methodical approach to repertoire, kept the transitions between pieces understated. There were no flourishes, only brief acknowledgements and occasional page-turns, suggesting a performer more focussed on the architecture of the music than on performance itself.
“Every symphony poses decisive choices for the performer, also in relation to the orchestral performance tradition,” Buccio said, contextualising the interpretive and technical depth required. He noted that Liszt began these transcriptions in the 1830s, but returned to complete the full set in the 1860s — a span that reflects the transcriber’s own artistic maturity. “The writing for piano of the symphonies belongs to Liszt’s fullest maturity,” he added, drawing a historical arc from Beethoven’s time to his own.
This isn’t Buccio’s first engagement with the Calcutta School of Music. Last year, he presented the complete cycle of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas — a project that similarly combined performance with pedagogy. His return for the symphonies reinforced his commitment to long-form musical storytelling and to bringing lesser-heard repertoire into accessible settings.
“Performing at the Calcutta School of Music is very special for me,” Buccio said, “and I am very happy to contribute to the educational purposes of the institution and to have the opportunity to be closer to aspects of the musical culture of the city.”
Buccio flanked by CSM’s Jyotishka Dasgupta and Chaitali Ganguly
The Calcutta School of Music has long been a cornerstone of the city’s Western classical tradition, and its recital space served the performance well. The audience — comprising students, teachers, musicians and enthusiasts — responded with thoughtful engagement.
Behind the scenes, CSM’s president Jyotishka Dasgupta, stood watch. It was under his baton of vision that such programming found fertile ground. “This was a very rare opportunity for us,” he said. “It would be very difficult to find a pianist who would agree to come to Kolkata and perform such major works over four concerts. Professor Buccio is quite an exception.”
“The school’s mission is to provide music lovers in Kolkata with the best opportunities to listen to world-class classical music and to enable budding musicians to develop taste for Western classical music,” Dasgupta added.