Is Bussotti now the last remaining member of his generation of avant-garde composers? His work is certainly somewhat neglected in comparison to most of the others, which is a shame since some of his work is very beautiful, especially the larger-scale pieces. I haven't heard many of them in concert, though there was a memorable performance of his Rara Requiem at the QEH some time in the 1980s. (Irrelevant anecdote: after that concert finished I spotted someone in the audience I thought was Bussotti, which would have been odd since he hadn't taken a bow at the end, but I was so convinced I went up to him and asked if he was the composer. No, he replied, but here is a composer for you; he stepped aside and standing behind him was Hans Werner Henze, with whom I had a brief chat.)
The reason for my starting this thread, though, was that yesterday I downloaded a double CD of Bussotti I didn't know existed until then, consisting of a single work Il catalogo รจ questo (named after the line in Don Giovanni I guess, though this isn't made clear). I used to have an LP of this and listened to it often, but in the meantime it seems to have grown to about three times its previous duration. It's a wonderful example of Bussotti at his most intricately opulent (sounding a bit like Andrew Clements there
), full of strange collage-like mixtures of romantic/tonal elements surrounded by glittering and virtuosic, um, encrustations, nobody can do that quite like Bussotti.
The Luxembourg Philharmonic (and various soloists) is conducted by Arturo Tamayo. I got it from Presto Classical.
The reason for my starting this thread, though, was that yesterday I downloaded a double CD of Bussotti I didn't know existed until then, consisting of a single work Il catalogo รจ questo (named after the line in Don Giovanni I guess, though this isn't made clear). I used to have an LP of this and listened to it often, but in the meantime it seems to have grown to about three times its previous duration. It's a wonderful example of Bussotti at his most intricately opulent (sounding a bit like Andrew Clements there
), full of strange collage-like mixtures of romantic/tonal elements surrounded by glittering and virtuosic, um, encrustations, nobody can do that quite like Bussotti.The Luxembourg Philharmonic (and various soloists) is conducted by Arturo Tamayo. I got it from Presto Classical.
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