Gramophone considered Oleg Marshev's first album of Prokofiev on Danacord (DACOCD391) as featuring 'one of the most authoritative and impassioned performances [of the First Sonata] on disc so far'. His interpretation of the 'War' Sonata trilogy was awarded a 'Classic CD Choice' and compared with pillars of the gramophone such as Richter, Berman and Ashkenazy. Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, Oleg Marshev trained with Valentina Aristova at the Gnessin State Musical College and with Mikhail Voskresensky at the Moscow Conservatoire. He is numbered among the fifth generation of Russian pianism since Liszt, through he lineage of Alexander Siloti, Konstantin Igumnov and Voskresensky's teacher, Lev Oborin. Resident in Italy since 1991, Marshev received awards in several international piano competitions in Canada, Italy, Portugal, Spain, USA, including four first prizes. He is now widely acknowledged as one of the most talented Russian pianists of his generation.

All six of these orchestral works exemplify Busoni's personalized classicism. The Lustspielouverture (Comedy Overture) is light, and almost Mozartian in clarity, whilst Gesang vom Reigen der Geister (Song of the Spirit Dance) is a delicately scored chamber piece, forward-looking in both style and content. Both the Concertino for Clarinet and the Flute Divertimento reveal Busoni's affinity for solo instruments; the former is deftly organized and the latter more obviously capricious. The spirit of Johann Strauss II haunts the infectious Tanzwalzer and the Rondo arlecchinesco unleashes Busoni's broadsides of wit. In 2002 Francesco La Vecchia was appointed Artistic Director and Resident Conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma. Under his leadership the orchestra has rapidly achieved success in Europe and in highly successful tours to St Petersburg, Madrid, Belgrade, Brussels, Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, London, Athens, Berlin, Beijing and Shanghai.

Assistant leader of the Philharmonia Orchestra since 2016, Fabrizio Falasca studied with Salvatore Accardo at the Walter Stauffer Academy and has subsequently played chamber music with him on many occasions. He has made concerto appearances across Europe and in the USA, China and South America, as well as making appearances as leader of the Suisse Romande and BBC Philharmonic orchestras, among others. For his debut on Brilliant Classics, Fabrizio Falasca has chosen to record the two sonatas by his countryman Ferruccio Busoni. They form separate landmarks in Busoni's career despite their relatively close opus numbers. Adolf Brodsky accepted the dedication of the First Sonata Op.29 from the 24-year-old Busoni despite being the pre-eminent German soloist of his day; but then the composer had a prodigious childhood behind him and could already be counted an experienced composer - as one may hear from the Sonata's sophisticated translation of sonata form and it's references to the German musical tradition from Bach and Mozart onwards. Also from this early period but much less familiar is the collection of four graceful Bagatelles which Busoni dedicated to the seven-year-old Egon Petri, who would become, as a pianist, the composer's foremost disciple and interpreter on record. Both works, however, shrink somewhat beside the mastery of the Second Sonata which Busoni completed in 1898 shortly before the move to Berlin where, as a teacher, he would exercise a decisive influence over a generation of composers and performers. The Sonata opens with a serene and intensely lyrical slow movement, followed by a brief and Beethovenian bridge to the keystone of the sonata, a spacious set of six variations on a Bach chorale. Here is all the depth of feeling, dark humour and harmonic ambiguity that underpin Busoni's mature style.

Busoni: Violin Sonatas

Volume 13 is the final instalment in Wolf Harden's series of Busoni's piano music, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the composer's death in 2024. It features selections from the multi-volume Klavierubung ('Piano Exercise') as well as some early miniatures, and more.

Busoni's operatic masterpiece, Doktor Faust, was left unfinished on his death in 1924. A DVD (37998) and Blu-ray (57998) of this performance was released on Dynamic in March of this year, receiving much critical acclaim. Cornelius Meister conducts the orchestra and chorus of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino with Dietrich Henschel in the title role. This release marks the 100th anniversary of the composer's death. May 2025 will be the 100th anniversary of the opera's premiere performance.

Piano Concerto Op. 39

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OehmsClassics now releases the recording of this controversial production of Doktor Faust by Nicolas Brieger made in 2008 just in time for the Munich Opera Festival. The title role is sung by Wolfang Koch, who will sing Wotan this year at Bayreuth in the Jubilee Ring Cycle. The singer can be assured of an appropriate portion of attention, and the new CD could hardly appear at a more favorable time.

Ferruccio Busoni's Elegies (1908) and An die Jugend (1909) are experimental pieces that explore new pathways in the composer's harmonic language and artistic evolution. Elegies is an aesthetic manifesto, a wish for a turning point in the composer's creative evolution, but also, more ambitiously, in all future music. An die Jugend is a collection of four pieces written in 1909 which share some stylistic features with Busoni's first Elegy, while showing even further experimentation on the composer's part. Carlo Grante is one of Italy's foremost concert pianists. He has performed in such major venues as the Vienna Musikverein, the Berlin Philharmonie's Chamber Music Hall, London's Wigmore Hall and Barbican Hall, Rome's Santa Cecilia Hall, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Dresden Semperoper, the Stuttgart Opera, Prague's Rudolfinum, as well as at Lincoln Center and the Kennedy Center in the US. He has appeared as soloist with major orchestras including the Dresden Staatskapelle, London's Royal Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony, Orchestra of St. Cecilia, MDR Leipzig, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and Concertino Wien. Grante performs these works on a B�sendorfer Imperial Grand Piano.

•This year’s 90th anniversary of Ferruccio Busoni's (1866-1924) death provides the occasion to present an album mostly of his transcriptions. Pianist David Theodor Schmidt (b. 1982) is one of the young generation of musicians who already enjoy great acclaim in the musical world. His busy concert schedule includes recitals and concerts at prestigious venues in Germany and the rest of Europe. “... (he is) new idol of all piano enthusiasts.” - Süddeutsche Zeitung

The music on this release belongs mainly to Ferruccio Busoni's youth and is certainly indebted to the great romantic appraoch to the piano of Chopin, Schumann and Mendelssohn, apart from the Contrapunctisches Tanzstuck of 1889 with its more futuristic broadening of the tonal palette. Later in his life Busoni leaned towards a young new classicism, generated by his instinctive identification with the great J.S. Bach.

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Busoni: Piano Works

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For his debut album, the Leipzig-based pianist Hannes Pohlit has recorded rare works of the virtuoso piano-repertoire on the Blthner grand piano. The recordings took place in 2021 in the Media Campus Villa Ida (Leipzig) and were sponsored by the Media Foundation of the Sparkasse Leipzig. Hans Werner Henze's (1926 2012) "Lucy Escott Variations", dedicated to the memory of a historical opera-singer, pay homage to the elegance of the Italian Belcanto. George Enescu's (1881 1955) first Piano Sonata explores the dark colors of Romanian soul-landscapes. Franz Liszt's (1811 1886) most famous organ work "Fantasy and Fugue on the choral 'Ad nos, ad salutarem undam'" was performed at the inauguration of the great organ in the Merseburg Cathedral. In the transcription for piano by Ferruccio Busoni (1866 1924), the pianist shows the great variations of timbres Blthner Aliquot grand piano can provide, from the highly expressive fantasy to the roaring fugue, and in the meditative Adagio gives space for the warm, vocal timbres of the instrument.

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