The essence of Ferruccio Busoni’s music lies in its synthesis of his Italian and German ancestry, emotion and intellect, imagination and rigour. This seventh volume in Naxos’s highly-praised series brings together several virtuosic operatic transcriptions, paraphrases and fantasies, as well as demanding studies and two piano sonatinas. ‘Wolf Harden is a stupendous pianist who can deliver what Busoni demands and then some’ (American Record Guide on Vol. 2).

Wolf Harden's Busoni cycle reaches a high point with Volume 5. Almost alone among pianists who've tackled Busoni's formidable Bach "St. Anne" transcription on disc, Harden does not aim to imitate the organ, but instead pares down the booming basses and delivers the treble register octaves with cutting brilliance and meticulously shaped ornaments. Only in the fugue's climactic final pages does Harden's energy flag. Similarly, he brings welcome transparency to the full-bodied, Schumannesque textures throughout the early Op. 16 Etudes and the later, more harmonically sophisticated Op. 33b pieces.

Volume 5 offers the Chopin Variations in their compressed 1922 revision, which is no less ambitious and difficult than the longer, earlier version on Volume 2. Harden plays superbly, particularly in regard to his deft balancing of rapid, chromatic passagework as it zooms in and around block chords and pillar-like bass octaves. Richard Whitehouse's informative booklet notes and Naxos' warm, clear engineering make this disc all the more attractive. Strongly recommended.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

As I've noted in previous reviews, the nature of the keyboard writing in Liszt's massive organ fantasy and fugue based on the chorale Ad nos, ad salutarem undam from Meyerbeer's Le Prophete lends itself well to the piano. Although Liszt himself made an effective piano duet arrangement, Busoni's two-handed piano version can stand toe-to-toe with Liszt's B minor sonata as a virtuoso showpiece. That is, if you have the right pianist.

By and large, Wolf Harden is up to the task. He effortlessly navigates the outer sections' technical difficulties and stamina-testing textures, and sensitively sustains the central lyrical movement. Perhaps the latter emerges with more austere transparency in Hamish Milne's Hyperion studio recording, while the formidable fugue benefits from Giovanni Belluci's greater animation and dramatic sweep in an out-of-print recording on the small Assai label. And perhaps you could imagine more incisive and assertive interpretations of the weak "fake Brahms" F minor sonata Busoni wrote as a teenager and of the composer's late, bitonally obsessed Prélude et etude arpèges. However, this is definitely worth it for "Ad nod" and for Richard Whitehouse's extensive, highly informative booklet notes.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Busoni: Piano Music, Vol. 2

Here comes yet another cycle from Naxos, this time Ferruccio Busoni's piano music. Presumably this overview will encompass all the original works and transcriptions. Busoni's original compositions, in fact, often behave like transcriptions. The mighty Fantasia Contrappuntistica, for example, is a full blown fantasia with the final, unfinished contrapunctus of Bach's The Art of Fugue as its centerpiece. An die Jugend's five movements pay a sort of hommage to keyboard styles past and present (meaning Busoni's present). The Preludietto, Fughetta ed Esecizio's whole-tone scales sound like Debussy echt Deutsch. The third movement is essentially Bach's D major Prelude and Fugue from the Well Tempered Clavier Book 1 with discreet textural padding, followed by the prelude and fugue ingenuously combined.


It reminds me of Godowsky's chicanery (his combination of Chopin's "Black Key" and "Butterfly" Etudes, for example), but minus the fun. Like Messiaen and Reger, Busoni's music is utterly devoid of humor, and it requires a special kind of pianist. Although Wolf Harden may not possess the visionary drive and narrative sweep distinguishing recorded Fantasia Contrappuntistici from Christopher O'Riley, John Ogdon, Alfred Brendel, and Egon Petri (the latter two were on long-out-of-print mono LPs), there's much to savor in his clean fingerwork and rich, bass-oriented sonority. He digs into Busoni's massive chord climaxes like a hungry trencherman about to enjoy his aged Porterhouse steak, and he shades the composer's polytonal arpeggios with great sensitivity. There's no doubt that Harden has the technique and temperament for this repertoire, and I look forward to more. Next time, however, I hope the piano tuner doesn't leave when the recording sessions start.
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Busoni embodied an essentially recreative approach to the music of the past. His Bach transcriptions reveal an absolute command of intricate polyphony and a limpid clarity. Mozart stood as an aesthetic and technical exemplar while Cramer’s little-known Etudes are adapted for modern piano technique. Busoni preserved the Lutheran austerity of Brahms’s Chorale Preludes for Organ, Op. 122 whereas in the Mephisto Waltz No. 1 he augments Liszt’s heady writing with a super-virtuosity of his own. Wolf Harden I one of the most versatile pianists of his generation. He has enjoyed great success in the Trio Fontenay, an ensemble that he founded in 1980 and with which he has toured to all the world’s major music centres. Harden devotes himself not only to chamber music but, with the same success, to the solo piano repertoire.

Dissatisfied with the traditional concerto form, Bussoni created a monumental work lasting 68 minutes which is symphonic in scale and intent, requiring of the pianist virtuosity and stamina of the highest order, yet also a sensitive, even intimate, collaboration with the orchestra. In this well-proportioned performance by Egon Petri's foremost pupil Gunnar Johansen, that above all respects Busoni's large-scale architecture, listeners will hear both the trancendental virtuosity and the poetic sensitivity called for by the score. Released with the kind cooperation of the Gunnar and Lorraine Johansen Foundation.

The Fantasia contrappuntistica is a tough nut for performers and listeners alike, though more approachable for both in its two-piano version, made in 1922. It is rarely attempted and, arguably, its most compelling interpretations?manic hysteria projected by the young Peter Serkin and Richard Goode (LP, Columbia MS 6891) and dreamlike radiance divined by Ursula Oppens and the late Paul Jacobs (LP, Nonesuch 79061)?were left behind in the Silver Rush. CD-era accounts have tended toward the cautious and pedantic; for instance, Ronald Stevenson and Joseph Banowetz?s oddly muted take (Altarus AIR-CD-9044) or Serkin?s stiffly maundering re-make with András Schiff (ECM New Series 1676/77). Schiller and Humphreys, on the other hand, are briskly paced while evincing a tonal warmth in which Busoni?s punctus contra punctus lifts lyrically into invitation, ingratiation, and, at moments, exhilaration, if at the cost of leaving his astounding play of parts under-articulated.


A similar approach informs the Mozart arrangements?the relaxation of contrapuntal rigor (brilliantly incisive leading parts against barely audible subsidiary detail) is the duo?s tradeoff for tonal finesse rather than the fault of Naxos?s close, balanced sound. Details of Busoni?s attentions, by the way?elisions and occasional recomposition?and their rationale may be found in Larry Sitsky?s Busoni and the Piano (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), a beguiling and invaluable companion that no one who cares for this fare should be without.


Schiller and Humphreys do as well as anyone with the Improvisation on ?Wie wohl ist mir.? Composed in 1914 during a stay with Marchese Silvio delle Valle di Casanova on Lago Maggiore?where the Futurist Umberto Boccioni painted the familiar portrait of Busoni reproduced on the album cover?the Improvisation is a recomposition of the final movement of Busoni?s Second Violin Sonata, completed in 1900, that is, the ripest late Romanticism, from the vantage of Busoni?s final and decisive ?turning point? toward the compact, laconic, visionary Modernism of his last decade. The upshot is curious, mixed, and interesting rather than persuasive. Schiller and Humphreys do as well as anyone with it and better than most by giving the heterogeneous elements their head, so to speak, as they arise. Despite the reservations noted, this collection affords abundant pleasure and is enthusiastically recommended.


FANFARE: Adrian Corleonis

Busoni’s monumental Piano Concerto was completed in 1904 and remains the longest piano concerto to have been heard in public. He thought of the work as his ‘Italian Symphony’ but this Concerto for piano, orchestra and male chorus is an unclassifiable product, and an extraordinary synthesis of Austro-German and Italian impulses. In its virtuosity and lyricism it is one of the most remarkable works in the repertoire, making use in its final movement of the ‘Hymn to Allah’, from Adam Oehlenschläger’s play Aladdin. Roberto Cappello triumphed at the Premio Busoni competition in 1976 and is a leading international soloist.

Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" - Busoni: Turandot Suite

JORGE BOLET LIVE AT CARNEGIE H

All the works on this recording were composed when Busoni was between the ages of eleven and fifteen. Full of charm and wit, they reveal his precocious absorption of earlier models- principally Bach, Mozart, Weber and Schumann- as well as exceptional technical finesse. Una festa di villagigio charts the day’s events of a village festival whilst Suite campestre, one of his most distinctive early compositions, possesses moments of inwardness that presage the mature works to come. Wolf Harden, who was born in Hamburg in 1962, is one of the most versatile pianists of his generation. He has enjoyed great success in the Trio Fontenay, an ensemble that he founded in 1980 and with which he has toured to all the world’s major music centres. Harden devotes himself not only to chamber music but, with the same success, to the solo piano repertoire. His concert tours have taken him to South America and India as well as to countries throughout Europe, and his special affinity with unusual repertoire is attested by numerous recordings. He was the first to record a complete version of Hans Pfitzner’s Piano Concerto and has recorded piano music by Erno Dohnanyi, Franz Lehar and Ferruccio Busoni.

BUSONI: VIOLIN SONATA, VIOLIN

Music lovers are familiar with Ferruccio Busoni due to his extensive revisions of Johann Sebastian Bach's keyboard works, but the Italian's own compositions have long been reserved for the pleasure of a handful of connoisseurs. Looking at their technical scope, it is not difficult to see why: Busoni, a true-blue composer in the original sense of the word, possesses an original, eclectic style that is difficult to categorize. Pianist-performer Svetlana Belsky, who first discovered her love for the musical creator during her doctoral studies, thus insightfully avoids any attempt at stylistic classification, but rather interprets each and every piece with great respect to the particular work's inherent nature. Since Busoni's pieces, individually taken, run the whole gamut from a late-Romantic, occasionally even classical aesthetic to borderline atonality, one would expect a coherent interpretation to be a truly fearful challenge. But this is where the magic sets in: Marrying awe-inducing technical capabilities to an artistic intuition of mind-boggling depth, Belsky manages to enter the inner sanctum of Busoni's creative thought, no matter the style, with miraculous panache. The pianist effortlessly captures the soul of the piece, regardless of whether the composer furiously tears down form and tonality in Sonatina Seconda, whether he reminisces in Chopin's lyricism in his Nine Variations, or whether he allows himself a rather off-color compositional remark by citing "Greensleeves" in Turandots Frauengemach. Belsky makes all these eccentricities sound perfectly plausible, imperative even; and she may well be the first pianist to accomplish this feat. Ferruccio Busoni: The Late Works, therefore, marks a new high point in the performance of the often- misunderstood composer; and Svetlana Belsky's innate understanding of her kindred spirit may well inspire a historic turning point in the public perception of Busoni's oeuvre.

Ferruccio Busoni composed a significant number of works for two pianos throughout his life. While Bach’s pervasive influence is already evident in some of his early compositions including the Preludio e Fuga and Capriccio, it reaches its most complex and glorious expression in the definitive 1921 version of his Fantasia contrappuntistica. In the case of Schumann’s Op. 134 for piano and orchestra, Busoni simply reduced the orchestral part for a second piano. However, his skill as a master transcriber and composer is revealed in his brilliant arrangements of Mozart’s works, which also highlight the subtlety and originality of his style. Aldo Orvieto has recorded extensively, releasing more than 70 albums dedicated to composers of the 20th century on a wide variety of labels, many receiving critical acclaim. Aldo Ciccolini appeared on the Naxos release of Achille Longo’s PianoQuintet (Ciccolini’s teacher) with the Circolo Artistico Ensemble (8.572628), which was nominated for an International Classical Music Award (ICMA).Classical Lost and Found wrote that: ‘Considering Ciccolini’s intimate association with his mentor’s quintet, this would have to be considered a definitive performance.’ Marco Rapetti received his Diploma cum laude at the Accademia Perosi in Biella. Rapetti has been awarded many prizes in national and international competitions, and has released several recordings, including the complete piano works of Borodin, Liadov, Dukas and Debussy.