Busoni Piano

Busoni needs listening to in extenso, troughs (not deep ones) as well as peaks. He was the first to acknowledge that his mature style was late in developing, but he was no late starter: the earliest music here, and pretty accomplished it is too, was written at 12 years old and by the age of 18 he had written the remarkable Variations and Fugue on Chopin's C minor Prelude, a tour de force of late nineteenth-century pianism and sonorous inventiveness.

Roland Pöntinen has recorded a selection of Ferruccio Busoni’s transcriptions and adaptations of works by Mozart, Bach and Chopin. His most famous transcription, a piano arrangement of the Chaconne from Bach's D minor Partita for unaccompanied violin, is featured as well as the Fantasia after J. S. Bach, Ten Variations on a Prelude by Chopin and Giga, Bolero e Variazione (Study after Mozart) from An die Jugend.

Busoni: Piano Concerto / John Ogdon
EMI Classics | Encore | February 6, 2007
EAC rip | ape (img + cue) | no log | 321 MB

No other account quite rivals the grandeur or the thrill of discovery of Ogdon's.

The Gramophone

The massive piano concerto by Busoni with closing men’s chorus is the culminating work of his first period and sums up what he learned from the piano masters of the past, without venturing far down the more exploratory paths of his later work. It has never been widely performed, but has of late been surprisingly often recorded./quote]

Busoni's fascinating, mammoth Piano Concerto no longer can claim to be the rarity it once was, when just about the only version available was John Odgon's not-really-as-great-as-its-reputation-would-lead-us-to-believe recording for EMI. For the performance that really is great, look no further. Dohnányi and Ohlssen play the spots off the work, rugged and impassioned in the opening two movements, thoughtfully intense in the long central Pezzo serioso, scintillating in the All'Italiana, and refreshingly cogent and truly "moderato" in a finale that never drags or sounds anti-climactic.

The Piano Concerto in C major, Op. 39 (BV 247), by Ferruccio Busoni, is one of the largest works ever written in this genre. The concerto lasts around 70 minutes and is in five movements; in the final movement a male chorus sings words from the final scene of the verse drama Aladdin by Adam Oehlenschläger, who also wrote the words of one of the Danish national anthems.

The essence of Ferruccio Busoni’s music lies in its synthesis of emotion and intellect, rooted in his Italian and German ancestry. His Sonatinas typify the stylistic range of his maturity, with the First Sonatina unfolding with the spontaneity of an improvisation. Veering between darting angularity and ominous expectancy, the Second Sonatina is one of his most radical musical statements, while the poise of the Fourth Sonatina marks Busoni’s closest approach to Impressionism. The Drei Albumblätter represent Busoni at his most austere and profound, reflecting the mystical character of his late music.

The essence of Ferruccio Busoni’s music lies in its synthesis of emotion and intellect, rooted in his Italian and German ancestry. His Sonatinas typify the stylistic range of his maturity, with the First Sonatina unfolding with the spontaneity of an improvisation. Veering between darting angularity and ominous expectancy, the Second Sonatina is one of his most radical musical statements, while the poise of the Fourth Sonatina marks Busoni’s closest approach to Impressionism. The Drei Albumblätter represent Busoni at his most austere and profound, reflecting the mystical character of his late music.