Busoni never came closer to his dream of Italian music than with that night on May 11, 1917 of double performance in Zurich, which he...

Busoni never came closer to his dream of Italian music than with that night on May 11, 1917 of double performance in Zurich, which he calls himself "La Nuova Commedia dell' Arte" I ("Turandot") and II ("Arlecchino"). In the unusually short time from December 1916 to March 1917 Busoni reworked the already existing material to the Incidental Music of Gozzis "Turandot" into an opera. This happened 4 years before Puccini started to work on the same content. "Arleccino", though in immediate neighborhood to "Dr. Faust" looking almost like a secondary work, is perhaps the composer's actual key composition. The speaking hero of his "theatralische Capriccio" represents a role model, which is at times more important to him than his aesthetic Faust, especially as the World War was increasing in intensity.

REVIEW:

Gerd Albrecht (so persuasive in unusual repertoire) conducts a spirited account of Turandot, attentive to both its smaller detail and its more majestic moments, and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra respond with some stunningly inspired playing. Coupled with some excellent contributions from RIAS Chamber Choir and a vivid, suitably atmospheric recording.

Josef Protschka is a particularly fine and formidable Kalaf, and a superb trio of performances from Robert Worle Johannes Werner Prein and Gotthold Schwarz as Truffaldino, Pantalone and Tartaglia (the equivalent of Puccini's Ping, Pang and Pong).

Albrecht's reading of Arlecchino is equally authoritative.

– Gramophone