It’s safe to say that there’s nothing in the classical repertoire quite like Ferruccio Busoni’sPiano Concertoof 1904, which made its first local appearance in a glorious San Francisco Symphony performance Thursday, June 22.

Certainly there’s nothing written for piano and orchestra that can rival the mad, all-encompassing fervor of this 75-minute spectacle. Its five expansive movements range across worlds of musical style and mood, from the frenetic to the contemplative and from learned to vernacular.

就好像作曲家——艾尔so the original piano soloist — was eager to tell you everything he knew on every subject, and to show you everything he could do at the keyboard as well.

For many of us, that kind of multipronged show-offiness has an irresistible appeal. And Thursday’s powerhouse performance in Davies Symphony Hall, the first of three conducted by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen and featuringIgor Levit as a tireless, commanding soloist, only made the whole thing that much more enticing.

In a way, it doesn’t so much matter whether you like the piece or not — although it’s hard to imagine anyone not being swept away by the work’s fervor and sprawl. Hearing the Busoni Piano Concerto live is almost certainly a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and it’s worth every investment of time and money.

这篇文章是建立在一个巨大的建筑计划,nd Busoni, with an endearing combination of earnestness and whimsy, left us an actual sketch of his conception. The odd-numbered movements are depicted as massive, weighty stone edifices, separated by gardens that correspond to the popular strains of the two intervening movements.

As a visualization of a musical experience, the drawing is at least as apt as any of the “graphic scores” created by the experimentalists of the mid-20th century. But what makes the concerto so potent is the profusion of carefully calibrated detail that runs through it, and which Thursday’s performers rendered with such eloquent athleticism.

Among the piece’s numerous delights is the glee with which Busoni hoovers up the work of all his compositional predecessors and treats them with a combination of admiration and cheeky disrespect (this is one of his many points of contact with Mahler, who was just six years older).

The orchestral opening, for example, is like a pastiche of Brahms, except with weirder and more interestingly slippery harmonies. The entrance of the piano soloist comes in torrents of huge, full-keyboard chords, as if Busoni had ripped the manuscript of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto out of his hands in order to show him how to do it right.

The two intermezzos are lighter in tone but, if anything, even more demanding for the soloist, who has to scurry around the keyboard like a cartoon mouse in hot pursuit. The second movement creates an air of measured jollity (Busoni’s tempo marking warns the performers not to rush); the fourth movement, a breathless tarantella, is relentless and hilarious.

But of course there’s much more going on here than mere impertinence. At the center of the concerto lies an enormous slow movement of extraordinary beauty and depth, its reach so ambitious that Busoni has to divide the thing into four subsections. There are string chorales and powerful brass orations; there are dark, brooding soliloquies for the low strings; and through it all, the piano keeps up a somber, deeply philosophical commentary on everything.

But wait — there’s more! As if the concerto hadn’t already ventured far enough into the outer reaches of what’s possible, Busoni brings in a men’s chorus (members of the Symphony Chorus led by guest director Jenny Wong) for the finale, to intone a poetic prayer to Allah in German by the Danish poet and playwright Adam Oehlenschläger. The invocation of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is deliberate and piquant, but with an added twist of exoticism.

Levit’s blend of technical prowess and intellectual heft made him an ideal interpreter of the score, in which he had to play at a demanding level for more than an hour almost without a break. Astonishingly, he returned to the stage for a ravishingly still-voiced encore of Bach’s “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland,” in Busoni’s classic arrangement.

To speak confessionally for a second, Thursday’s concert was a road-to-Damascus moment for this listener. Before then, I had only encountered Busoni’s Piano Concerto in recordings, where I found it impressive but wearisome.

Like so many great musical creations, though, the piece turns out to reveal its full dimensions only in live performance. Nothing else can do it justice.

Reach Joshua Kosman:jkosman@sfchronicle.com; Twitter:@JoshuaKosman