Busoni, Ferruccio (1866 - 1924)

[Mandryka]

Enjoying Donohoe’s elegies - sort of postmodernism avant la lettre.

[Serial_Apologist]

Enjoying Donohoe’s elegies - sort of postmodernism avant la lettre.

I now see I misspelt Stevenson's first name wrongly in the pre-penultimate post to yours: it should of course be RONALD. The Elegies period was an interesting one in that it represented stylistically something of a convergence towards both Bartok and Schoenberg, and I believe he corresponded fraternally with both of them.

[gurnemanz]

I was very grateful a few years ago via this thread to be directed by kea to Marc-André Hamelin's 3CD survey of his late solo piano works. http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...258#post412258 A stimulating and diverse selection.

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA67951/3

[Mandryka]

I was very grateful a few years ago via this thread to be directed by kea to Marc-André Hamelin's 3CD survey of his late solo piano works. http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...258#post412258 A stimulating and diverse selection.

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/d...c=D_CDA67951/3

Yes I’ve listened to both the elegies and the Indianisches Tagebuche I on t from Hamelin and it’s a great pleasure. There’s something intriguing about Busoni’s solo piano music for sure.

[smittims]

I've been amazed by Busoni's surviving recordings, revealing a tantalising potential. It's a loss that he didn't live into the electric age when he might have been persuaded to enter the studios again.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes I’ve listened to both the elegies and the Indianisches Tagebuche I on t from Hamelin and it’s a great pleasure. There’s something intriguing about Busoni’s solo piano music for sure.

I think it was ahinton who told a story about John Ogden using Busoni's Fantasia Contrappuntistica as a warm-up to playing Sorabji! Certainly one would needs be top-notch to tackle either let alone both. However, while not all Busoni's mature piano music is that virtuosic, I wonder if I am alone in hearing its influence, both in that sense and in the way harmony works, in Prokofiev's late piano sonatas, to which the term "new classicism" could likewise be applied, and in Ronald Stevenson's monumental Passacaglia on DSCH.

[Mandryka]

Anyone explored the two quartets? I’m surprised by how agreeable they are - Brahms and Schumann and Mendelssohn vibes.

[ahinton]

I think it was ahinton who told a story about John Ogden using Busoni's Fantasia Contrappuntistica as a warm-up to playing Sorabji! Certainly one would needs be top-notch to tackle either let alone both.

Guilty as charged!

[LMcD]

I have just spent the last couple of days listening when in the car to Busoni's Piano Concerto with John Ogdon at the keyboard on an EMI Encore CD picked up for a song .

Second movement of Ogdon's recording of the Busoni Piano Concerto has just been played on Private Passions at the request of today's guest Thomas Ades.

[smittims]

A very interesting Busoni CD I can recommend is onthe LPO label (LPO 0056), a 75 minute abridged version of Doktor Faust, made by Sir Adrian Boult in collaboration with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who sings in this LPO concert recording with Sir Adrian conducting. It;s a fine cast including Richard Lewis, Heather Harper and John Cameron.

Doktor Faust is a long opera, as I discovered in 1981 when I had to make a swift walk to Waterloo to catch my train after a BBC concert performance conducted by Michael Gielen, and this shorter version may be the answer for those who feel daunted by its length.