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The usual line about Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) is that his ideas were more important than his music, yet the more of his music I hear, the more I'm inclined to question that notion. The monumental works are well known, indeed the Fantasia Contrappuntistica (1910) has spawned an entire sub genre of all-encompassing compositions such as Kaikhosru Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum and Roland Stevenson's Passacaglia on DSCH. Equally impressive, if less influential, is Busoni's gigantic Piano Concerto (1904) which was recently recorded by Marc-André Hamelin on Hyperion.

These works, important as they are, give a false impression of Busoni's achievement. He was a skilled performer, remarkable even in an era rich in great pianists. He produced important editions of the music of Bach and Liszt. He was the teacher of such varied talents as Kurt Weill, Oscar Luening, and Edgar Varèse. He was an inspiration to the composers of the Second Viennese School. He was an important theorist, his classic work, Outline of a New Aesthetic of Music (1907), remains in print to this day. His operas, Doktor Faust (1925, based on Marlowe's play), Arlecchino and Turandot (both from 1917, the latter pre-dating Puccini by several years), still hold the stage. Yet it is as a composer of music for piano that he produced his most important work.

The pieces recorded here give a good picture of the range of his compositions for piano. The Red Indian Diary (1915) is a legacy from a visit to America in 1910. Moved by the wretched state of the North American Indians, Busoni wrote these pieces feeling that music was able to "transcend all boundaries." Busoni's pupil Egon Petri performed these pieces on the radio in 1959. In his hands they sound like rugged chips off the Central European block. Jeni Slotchiver's reading emphasizes the "Americaness" of the Diary. Rhythms are more flowing and syncopated. Indeed, one of the Hopi tunes from the slow third section is made to sound quite similar to the spiritual "Deep River" with its sonorous and sustained chords.

The Seven Elegies (1907) were completed the same year as the Outline of a New Aesthetic of Music. Busoni claimed that "The Elegies signify a milestone in my development. Almost a transformation." They form a fascinating cycle, encompassing several of Busoni's obsessions: complex harmony, rich textures, subtle counterpoint, Lutheran chorales, Neapolitan song, and a mastery of chromaticism that never becomes pointlessly dissonant. Each Elegy is a miniature tone poem imbued with the depth of Liszt's music at its best.

It is not Liszt, however, but Bach with whom Busoni is most closely associated. Busoni wrote numerous adaptations and transcriptions of Bach's music, none more famous than the Chaccone. Jeni Slotchiver's interpretation is quite different from Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's performance on EMI recorded in 1948. Michelangeli pulls out all the stops, bringing out all the passion and virtuosity inherent in the piece. Slotchiver is more restrained, more in keeping with the sarabande style of Bach's original. The pulse is steady and rubato is used sparingly. The dynamics are almost as wide as in Michelangeli's performance, but transitions from loud passages to soft are less abrupt and ultimately less jarring.

In comparing Slotchiver's interpretation with the classic recordings of Petri and Michelangeli, one is struck by the change in performance practice since that time. Both Petri and Michelangeli sound mannered and romantic in their approach. Phrasing is more emphasized, dynamic changes are more abrupt. Slotchiver, in contrast, emphasizes forward momentum and rhythmic polish. One feels the music is being allowed to sing. This is, to some extent, a contemporary prejudice. Petri was considered Busoni's great disciple and his playing can be assumed close to the composer's own style. But our ears have changed since that time, and to try to ape Petri's style would be absurd. Slotchiver doesn't do this and instead brings Busoni's music into our own era. It is a bold and brazen choice.

This release is a revelation. Jeni Slotchiver is a pianist of the highest artistry. Fully in control of this notoriously difficult material, she has the technical equipment to let the music speak without impediment. Her plans are to record Busoni's music in its entirety over the next ten years or so. I look forward to her next installment with relish.

Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) was one of the most important figures in European music of his time. Born in Empoli, he was the child of Ferdinando, a noted clarinetist, and Anna Weiss, a pianist of German origin. Busoni grew up in Trieste, where he studied with his mother. He first performed at the piano in public at the age of seven.

In 1875 his father enrolled him at the conservatory in Vienna, obliging the entire family to move to Austria. Busoni then studied in Graz, and at the age of twenty, he rebelled against his nagging father and moved to Leipzig, where he was able to meet many renowned composers of the era.

From 1888 to 1915, he principally dedicated himself to solo performances, achieving enormous success wherever he played. At the same time he was praised for his work as a teacher in Helsinki, Moscow, Boston, Berlin, Weimar, Vienna, Basel, and finally at Bologna’s Liceo Musicale in 1913.

His Italian adventure lasted only a short while because of the outbreak of World War I. Busoni, who was against Italy’s entrance into the war, resigned his post. He then went to the United States, and afterwards established himself in Switzerland, where he was in voluntary exile until 1920. He then returned to Berlin. There he was called upon to fill the post of composition professor at the Prussian Academy of the Arts. He lived in Berlin until 1924, the year of his death. Not a very lengthy life, but an intense one, considering the numerous activities he was involved in and his body of work, noted particularly for its richness--consisting of more than four hundred pieces, of which 115 represent transcriptions, arrangements and cadenzas of works composed by others, starting with Bach.

Despite this, Busoni continues to suffer from low visibility, above all in Italy, both because of reasons linked to the appreciable difficulty of playing many of his compositions, but also because playing his pieces often involves delving into arguments which sometimes lie outside of the scope of music.

It is, therefore, not surprising that there are truly very few artists specialized in a Busoni repertoire, whether nationally or internationally. Jeni Slotchiver, the American pianist, overwhelmingly stands out among these artists. Recently she, along with Centaur Records, recorded the collection’s third volume, entitled Busoni the Visionary.

The recording includes several works of Busoni’s mature period, among them: the Toccata (1920); Ten Variations on a Chopin Prelude, from the 1922 version; Prelude and Arpeggio Study (1923); a very short sketch with a delicate impressionistic flavor, entitled Nuit de Noël (1908); and two substantial incursions into Bach territory, the Fantasie nach Johann Sebastian Bach (1909) in homage to the memory of his father Ferdinando; and the Prelude and Triple Fugue in E Flat Major BMV 522, “S. Anne,” written in 1890, taking as a reference the piece of the same title from the third volume of the Clavier-Übung.

A broad collection, even if limited in terms of the entire production, it provides an ample idea of Busoni’s music for the piano, often characterized by grandiose architecture, not just when confronting monumental Bach scores, but also in pieces such as the Toccata and Chopin variations.

It is a universe distinguished by powerful resonances, but also by evocative passages, both of which have been restored to their fullness by the extraordinary interpretation of Jeni Slotchiver, who shows her world-class playing, endowed with great technique, a sure touch that is exceedingly refined, and which, when necessary, becomes energetic and decisive.

The recording comes with an accompanying booklet, edited by the pianist. It is as rich as it is meticulous, and provides direct testimony of the profound studies carried out by Slotchiver over a long period of time, considering her first CD devoted entirely to Busoni, dates to 1999 and we are most probably a long way off from the end.

In conclusion, it is a CD of great depth, which surely brings justice to its prestigious composer, who was very esteemed in his lifetime, but who undeservedly fell too soon into a reprehensible oblivion.

BUSONI: The Visionary III ****

Recorded 11-13 January 2012 at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York City, this third installment of Ms. Slotchiver’s ongoing “Busoni: the Visionary” series surveys a number of the composer-pianist’s late works and one of his four major Bach organ transcriptions, the “St. Anne,” which premiered in 1890.

“Listening to Busoni’s music,” Ms. Slotchiver says, “we enter a world rich in lyricism, vibrant rhythm, harmonic invention, and the development and transformation of compelling ideas. Beyond this journey, layers of history, philosophy, mythology, opera and theater emerge, further illuminating and informing the experience. The audience embarks on an astonishing voyage.”

Slotchiver opens with Busoni’s three-movement Toccata (1920), his last major composition. Typical of the composer’s “layering” process, the knotty figurations of the “Preludio” echo the obstacles Busoni noted in his model, Frescobaldi. The askew harmony of the “Fantasia” combines the chromatic harmony of Franck with the ceremonial chordal structures in Liszt. Busoni’s attempt to “liquefy” polyphony assaults our senses, even as the bass tissue becomes increasingly massive. Busoni himself took the dotted rhythm to signify Mephisto, in obvious response to Liszt. Slotchiver suddenly executes a bridge passage, Animando assai, that leads into another contrapuntal morass, the final “Ciaccona,” thoroughly based on the same form of Bach’s D Minor Solo Partita, BWV 1004. The unrelenting stretti, rather mercilessly, proceed to a crashing A-flat Minor, the last, punishing chords a reminder of the Liszt B Minor Sonata.

The Ten Variations on a Theme of Chopin - the C Minor Prelude, Op. 28, No. 20 - represent two distinct periods in Busoni’s life – 1884 original and 1912 – the year of the work’s revision. If the eighteen-year-old Busoni imposed a heaviness on Chopin modeled on the German figure of Brahms, the revised score has become lyrically transparent, contrapuntal, and playful. The right hand figures easily remind us of Liszt’s La Campanella in the cotillion sonorities.

Busoni places his fugal materials in the context of a wild tarantella. The metric variety seems to combine moments of Debussy, Gottschalk, and Gershwin, with a later, wry parody of Chopin’s “Minute” Waltz.

At the behest of pianist Isidor Philipp, Busoni created his Prelude et Etude (en Arpeges) in 1923. The late work sings singularly in bitonal fashion, testing the player’s articulation in staccato as well as legato figuration. Several of the motifs complement the love music for the opera Doktor Faust. The succeeding Etude combines aspects of both Scriabin and Ravel, for pure breadth of color and richness of sonority. Busoni seem intent on liberating the thumb position from its “subservience” under the moving four fingers. Bells and hortatory hymnal cadences collide and merge in the manner of a fantasia, the spirit “ecstatic” in the same sense we acknowledge Scriabin of the last five sonatas.

The 1908 Nuit de Noel: Esquisse pour le Piano projects a kind of pagan, pantheistic response to the New Year, a flotation device of folk color and liberated nuance, in the manner of late Liszt and contemporary Debussy. Ostinato patterns and repeated notes clash and meld rather in phantasmagorical sequences, certainly reminiscent of old-church modes but no less anticipatory of John Adams and some of the aleatory composition ninety years forward. The whole might be regarded as a virtuoso contrafactum, the use of secular contexts for an originally sacred context.

The Fantasia nach Johann Sebastian Bach: Alla Memoria di mio Padre of 1909 used to supply a standard repertory piece for Egon Petri. That Busoni conceived the totality of his polyphonic creativity as Nachdictungen – epilogues and analogues to the master creator Bach – comes to the fore in this composition dedicated to Busoni’s father, Ferdinando. Bach has been translated and transmogrified into a ‘sublimated’ status, here in Nietzsche’s sense that “made sublime” means a simultaneous “deepening” and “raising up.” The F Minor opening sequence moves through sectionalized motifs that embrace the chorale-preludes Christ, der du bist helleTag and In dulci jubilo. The chordal allusions embrace the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue. The contest of harmony and invention, F Minor and F Major, collide and expire in exalted terms that Liszt himself might have coveted for his Dante Sonata.

Finally, the piano rendering of Bach’s 1739 Prelude and Triple Fugue in E-flat Major (1890) constitutes a “free arrangement” of the massive score, exploiting the modern piano’s capacity for colossal sonority that would rival the diapason of the organ original. To add to the sheer mechanical challenge of the Bach occasion, Slotchiver must constantly adhere to a strictly “vocal” conception of the various independent lines evolving under her fingers.

As an illumined, ardent disciple of the Busoni tradition, Ms. Slotchiver succeeds admirably, especially as her Hamburg Steinway resonates in thrilling colors captured by Engineer Tim Martyn.

Ferruccio Busoni thought of himself primarily as a composer, though he achieved greater fame as a virtuoso pianist. He's a fascinating, shadowy figure, acquainted with just about every notable early 20th century musician. As a teacher, Busoni's pupils included Weill, Varèse and Grainger. Wait around for long enough and you might be lucky enough to hear a performance of his big-boned Piano Concerto, though his name crops up more regularly as an arranger and transcriber of other composers' music, most notably Bach (leading to some concert promoters thinking he was actually called Bach-Busoni). This third volume of Jeni Slotchiver's ongoing exploration of the solo piano music concludes with a recasting of a vast Bach prelude and fugue originally composed for organ. Slotchiver absolutely nails the work's grandeur and epic sweep, and the final, bass-heavy minutes have to be heard to be believed.

Still more intriguing is the Fantasia nach Johann Sebastian Bach, composed in 1909 in response to the death of Busoni's father. Themes from chorales and keyboard suites are quoted, developed and sent spinning off in unexpected directions. It hangs together beautifully, and there's a sublime, quiet close. As with the organ prelude, Slotchiver makes a powerful case for this demanding music, and she's as persuasive in Busoni's Ten Variations on a Prelude of Chopin. Here, the older composer's Op 28 C minor prelude acts as a springboard for a more capricious sequence of explorations. A technically daunting Toccata from 1920 encapsulates Busoni's elusive style, the two edgy, brittle contrapuntal movements framing a dark, ruminative slow section. The late Prélude et Etude (en Arpèges) has an incendiary, apocalyptic close. As light relief, Slotchiver gives us the short, extrovert Nuit de Noël, the cry of Noël meant as a simple exclamation of joy. An intriguing, compelling recital which has made me want to hear the earlier discs in the series. Slotchiver's playing never disappoints, and her detailed, lucid sleeve notes are a pleasure to read.

Somehow, the last thing I feel like doing on the eve of the new millennium is go to some big bash of a party. This sobering event makes me want to settle down for a bit and take stock of it all.

Those who agree might find three new CD's conducive to an appropriately reflective millennial mode.

'Busoni the Visionary'

The composer and pianist Ferruccio Busoni was 34 and in his creative prime at the turn of the last century. A musician steeped in tradition yet infused with fervor for music's future, he would have been excellent company as the new millennium arrives.

A recent Centaur recording, appropriately called "Busoni the Visionary" (CRC 2438), presents a fascinating program of piano works impressively played by the pianist Jeni Slotchiver. The most unusual offering is "Red Indian Diary: Book One, Four Studies on Motifs of the North American Indians." While on a concert tour of the United States in 1910, Busoni visited a former student, Natalie Curtis, then a pioneering ethnomusicologist, who introduced him to her collection of American Indian melodies.

As a composer who ardently believed that music would some day transcend all boundaries, Busoni was captivated by the spareness, instinctive spirituality and haunting wistfulness of the melodies. "Red Indian Diary" presents melodies from several tribes, including the Hopi, Cheyenne and Wabanakis. Busoni first states the tunes with unadorned accompaniments, then turns each into a mystical musical rumination.

Commenting on the "Seven Elegies" from 1907 in her program notes, Ms. Slotchiver writes that the "fantastical and macabre, the sensual and holy all combine in these works of humble proportion." Filled with incandescent piano writing and music of stunning harmonic invention, the elegies seem as fresh at the end of this century as they were at its beginning. The program ends with a vivid performance of Busoni's ingenious piano transcription of the Chaconne from Bach's Partita in D minor for solo violin, which Ms. Slotchiver plays vividly.

Ferruccio Busoni was born in Italy on 1 April 1866 and died in Germany on 27 July 1924. Since his boyhood days Busoni was already earmarked for a successful musical career, and his reputation as a wonderchild rivaled that of his younger contemporary Wolfgang Erich Korngold. When only an adult just past his teens he became the most acclaimed piano virtuoso of his time, and like Liszt, Busoni's genius as an interpreter and performing artist overshadowed his career as a composer and musical visionary.

It was not for nothing that George Bernard Shaw suggested that Busoni compose under an assumed name, hoping that his works attain the recognition they deserved. Indeed, this is what the composer had to say in 1922, two years before his death: 'My style takes everyone aback: too young for the old, insufficiently mindless for the young, it constitutes a clear-cut chapter in the disorder of our times. Inasmuch it will hold its own better with subsequently fluctuating later generations.' Although still not one of the twentieth century's best loved composers, Busoni's name and fame are on a sound footing, and his works, particularly those for the piano, are held in high esteem.

The programme on this exciting issue covers some fifteen years of Busoni's life (1908-1923), and each piece has its own individually compelling secret to divulge, although the two Bach works easily betray Busoni's adulation for the great master. Toccata (1920) is Busoni's last major piano composition reflecting the turmoil and conflict surrounding his return to Berlin at war's end.

The Chopin Variations (1922) are a revised version of an 1884 piece dedicated to the same composer, and the hallmarks of the revision are the elementary refinement and poetic lightheartedness that Busoni had come to master towards the end of his artistic career.

The minute Nuit de Noël and en Arpèges are little gems that offset the grandeur of the other substantial pieces, and provide a fitting completion to an exhilarating disc.

Jeni Slotchiver's virtuosity, polish and control of nuance make for some gripping music making, and her huge range of dynamics are a joy to have. And what about her inlay card notes? Oh, fantastic stuff. A must for all pianophiles, especially Busoni fans.

Included is Busoni’s piano transcription of Bach’s “St. Anne” Prelude and Triple Fugue for Organ. But the Fantasia nach Johann Sebastian Bach (1909) shows innovative re-thinking of possibilities in Bach chorales, while Nuit de Noël (1908) imitates actual bells with their dissonant overtones. Slotchiver plays both with intimacy and fine gradations of touch. Busoni’s style evolved rapidly. Of the late works Ten Variations on a Prelude of Chopin (1922) is most accessible and varied, with shifts in tonal centre that create kaleidoscopic effects. Slotchiver is virtuosic in the middle and ending variations, and equally capable of projecting abrupt mood changes in one variation or quirky waltz style in another. She captures the mystic opening in Prélude et Etude (en Arpèges) of 1923, then conquers the etude’s wild arpeggios and acrobatic hand-crossing. In Toccata (1920) she emphasizes motifs from his operas, including the contemporaneous Doktor Faust. With a road map the listener can sort out this rich assemblage. Relax and remember: Busoni’s music does not resolve the contradictions encompassed by his genius (Italian and German, 19th century and modern, concertizing pianist and exploring composer), but plays with them masterfully.

Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) pointed toward music's postmodern future even as he anticipated the intervening reign of modernism. The Italian pianist-composer, looking back with intensity toward J.S. Bach while bursting with Romantic afflatus, had a mystical idea of the equivalent meaning of all music: "All melodies, heard before or never heard, resound completely and simultaneously — they are themselves the souls of millions of being in millions of epochs."

Out the window goes the "historicist" interpretation of music, that it either has to follow the true line of progress, whatever that means, or fall quickly into irrelevance. In defiance of Robert Browning, Busoni's reach may often have exceeded his grasp. In "The Great Pianists," Harold Schonberg aptly titles his Busoni chapter "Dr. Faust at the Keyboard."

Jeni Slotchiver, in the third volume of her "Busoni the Visionary"  series (Centaur CRC 3396), clarifies the Italian-German composer's vision in performances that are subtly shaped, powerful, and well-defined.

With his name often appearing in hyphenated form (after Bach's), Busoni the transcriber is of course represented here. The vehicle concludes the program: Bach's Prelude and Triple Fugue in E-flat major ("St. Anne"), a favorite of concert organists. Three stunning fugue subjects were clearly meat and drink to Busoni, and the performance seems to draw on Slotchiver's inexhaustible, disciplined resources.

There is typically much going on in a Busoni composition, especially when his muse is fired with enthusiasm for another composer. As a performer, he had a love-hate relationship with Chopin, but at 18 he paid tribute with the remarkable "Ten Variations on a Prelude of Chopin" (the beloved C minor, op. 28, no. 20). The young man's treatment is typical of his mature practice: flamboyant on the surface, severe in depth.

The glowering, epic Toccata, which opens the disc, displays Slotchiver's knack for knowing when to subordinate something and when to move it to the foreground. Busoni deploys his themes and figuration like chessmen — feinting, attacking, lying in wait until they can be strategically effective. When grandeur is called for, it can do with some understatement (which the pianist supplies) as Busoni often wants it to be self-evident grandeur — not vulgarized.

She brings off an uncharacteristic miniature, "Nuit de Noel," charmingly. And the monumental Fantasia nach Johann Sebastian Bach, written in memory of Busoni's father, brings out in this performance what the composer found both essential and potential about the Baroque master.