Busoni, Ferruccio (1866 - 1924)

[Barbirollians]

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 . I didn't know the work but it is surely one of the maddest things I have ever heard especially the arrival of a male chorus in the finale . Enjoyable high romanticism but struck me as unintentionally high camp .

Are the rest of his works as batty ? I only knew his bach transcriptions up to now .

[richardfinegold]

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 . I didn't know the work but it is surely one of the maddest things I have ever heard especially the arrival of a male chorus in the finale . Enjoyable high romanticism but struck me as unintentionally high camp .

Are the rest of his works as batty ? I only knew his bach transcriptions up to now .

Pretty much.

[Roehre]

...
Are the rest of his works as batty ? I only knew his bach transcriptions up to now .

No.
The 300-odd works of Busoni's show a quite wide variety, from early piano and chamber works to his last (unfinished) opera Dr.Faust.

there are a couple of nice chamber music CDs on Naxos, of which the clarinet pieces and those forcello and piano are IMO the ones to get an impresiion of that field (as is the 2nd violin sonata, btw).

In the orchestral music his early suites are very recommendable, as are his Turandot-suite op.41 [1905] and the concertante pieces (Violin concerto opus 35a [1897], the clarinet concertino op.48 [1920] and the divertimento for fluit and orchestra op.52 [1920]. Most important works however are the Berceuse élégiaque op.42 [1909, premiered by Mahler at his very last concert in New York 1910!] and its company piece Nocturne symphonique op.43 [1912]. In a lighter mood are the Rondo arlechinesco, the Tanzwalzer and above all the mozartian Lustspielovertüre op.38 [1904]

His six Piano sonatinas are a nice introduction into his pianistic world without the lisztian bravoura.
A work -if you like Bach's Kunst der Fuge that is- which IMO is a most listen to, is the Fantasia contrapuntistica, a work based on the KdF, but with excursions to the grosse Fuge too. Impressive, though needs a lot of listening to discover what exactly is happening.
Then there are the Chopin-variations, the set of 7 elegies and the sets An die Jugend (with Schumannesque undercurrents)

From his operas Dr.Faust is a must (an orchestral excerpt: 2 Faust-studies op.51), preferably in the Beaumont completion (1984), but the jarnach (1924) is not bad either.
Arlecchino is a nice comique opera, a commedia dell'Arte.

Barbirolians, there is much to discover in Busoni

[Sir Velo]

I didn't know the work but it is surely one of the maddest things I have ever heard especially the arrival of a male chorus in the finale . Enjoyable high romanticism but struck me as unintentionally high camp .

.

On that basis, presumably the finale of Mahler 2 strikes you in the same way?

[ahinton]

Thank you, Roehre! I would have written something along similar lines (adding in the operas Die Brautwahl and Turandot as well as the Toccata for piano) but simply despaired of the first two posts so much that I could not bring myself to do so! - a formidable scholar, a distinguished conductor (who conducted his piano concerto almost as often as he played its solo part and who gave one of the earliest performances of Elgar's Enigma Variations), a widely admired pedagogue, an accomplished editor and transcriber and one of the most remarkable pianists of his generation, Busoni was also arguably the most fascinating Italian composer since Palestrina who uniquely drew past and future together into the present.

[Roehre]

Thank you, Roehre! I would have written something along similar lines (adding in the operas Die Brautwahl and Turandot as well as the Toccata for piano) but simply despaired of the first two posts so much that I could not bring myself to do so! - a formidable scholar, a distinguished conductor (who conducted his piano concerto almost as often as he played its solo part and who gave one of the earliest performances of Elgar's Enigma Variations), a widely admired pedagogue, an accomplished editor and transcriber and one of the most remarkable pianists of his generation, Busoni was also arguably the most fascinating Italian composer since Palestrina who uniquely drew past and future together into the present.

His edition of Liszt's early Scherzo in g [S.153] (an edition, not a arrangement as he made of other Liszt/ Mendelssohn/ Schubert/ Bach/ Beethoven et al) , the transcription of Schönberg's opus 11/2 and his Bach-editions combined say it all, don't they?
And I do think that his cadenzas should be heard more too:
Beethoven PC1, 3 , 4, VC
Brahms VC
Mozart PC KV271, 453, 459, 466, 467, 482, 488, 491, 503 Flute KV314
von Weber Clarinet 1

[aeolium]

Thanks to Roehre and ahinton for their advocacy of this fascinating composer. I do think it is a pity that there has been no performance in Britain since the mid-1980s (IIRC) of what is imo his masterpiece, the unfinished opera Doktor Faust, and none at all here in the original language. I thought the ENO production by David Pountney in the 1980s was an imaginative one and the opera deserves to be revived here - I am sure it is in the repertory of opera houses on the continent.

[Bryn]

Kent Nagano has been a worthy advocate of Busoni's operatic works. His recordings of Arlechino, Turandot and Doctor Faust (with both the Jarnach and Beaumont endings included) have much to recommend them. The re-issue of the Doctor Faust set is very much a bargain, though you do have to make do with no libretto. I would also recommend getting the trimmed down concert version with Sir Adrian Boult at the helm, with DF-D in the title role. Now that is an historic recording!

[kea]

The 3CD Hyperion set of late piano music played by Marc-André Hamelin is my introductory recommendation at present—the Sonatinas, Elegies, Chopin Variations, Toccata, Fantasia nach J.S. Bach and numerous other smaller works, all receiving performances of pretty high calibre. Busoni's output for the piano is fantastically inventive and wide-ranging, though with quite a bit of intertextuality, and can be considered the "missing link" between Schumann/Liszt and Debussy/Schoenberg.* His orchestral and chamber music is equally fine though I don't know as much of it—nor do I know Doctor Faust which is said to be his masterpiece.

* well, one of several "missing links", obviously. >.>

[Lento]

Don't know much Busoni, but, listening to Reger's Clarinet Quintet (Lunchtime Concert, Wed 3rd June), had the fleeting thought of Brahms with a severe hangover!

[richardfinegold]

It's nice that B has his advocates. I tried to explore his work once and it just didn't click for me. I'm not much of a Lisztian as well.

[Serial_Apologist]

the "missing link" between Schumann/Liszt and Debussy/Schoenberg.

Yes that's really put him in a nutshell; in the 1907-9 period there are interesting harmonic associations with the evolving Bartok, eg the latter's "Bagatelles" and especially the "Elegies". I hear echoes of the later, more Classical Busoni in Prokofiev's later piano sonatas. The Scots composer Ronald Stevenson who has always been a strong advocate did a fantastic R3 series on Busoni's development through his piano music, in the 1970s, himself playing the works he illustrated.

[Serial_Apologist]

It's nice that B has his advocates. I tried to explore his work once and it just didn't click for me. I'm not much of a Lisztian as well.

The Lisztian comparison merits consideration, though I would say Busoni was a Liszt of the later "Nuage Gris" period of harmonic ambiguity and finding progressive traits in earlier composers subjectable to transcription, as opposed merely to bombast; I like that Lisztian influence rather in the way I appreciate Richard Strauss's influence on the early works of Bartok, Szymanowsky, and Vaugh Williams, restricted as the latter was mostly to traits of orchestration and harmony actually quite hard to trace in the would-be mentors, though it is there.

[ahinton]

Yes that's really put him in a nutshell; in the 1907-9 period there are interesting harmonic associations with the evolving Bartok, eg the latter's "Bagatelles" and especially the "Elegies". I hear echoes of the later, more Classical Busoni in Prokofiev's later piano sonatas. The Scots composer Ronald Stevenson who has always been a strong advocate did a fantastic R3 series on Busoni's development through his piano music, in the 1970s, himself playing the works he illustrated.

He did indeed; I remember it well! He is one of the leading Busoni scholars and a most remarkable pianist.

[umslopogaas]

'Doctor Faustus' is wonderful. I have the DG version, again with DF-D as Faust, but conducted by Leitner. The scene where Mephistopheles tempts him out of the magic circle is scary stuff. I once saw it at the ENO, in 1986, and still have the programme to prove it, but I fear I cant remember much about it.