The centenary of his death being upon us seems as good a time as any to consider the legacy of Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924). Acknowledged colossus of performance and of interpretation, his music remains underplayed and still misunderstood. Yet the Busoni piano discography is extensive and the most direct means with which to appreciate his ‘new aesthetic’.

Surveying this piano music necessitates going against its composer’s wishes by discussing at least some of the pieces from his early years. By his own admission, Busoni may never have had a childhood, but his adolescence and early manhood were prolific, with a number of these works worth revival today. Not their least fascination lies with his methodically traversing the creative precepts of the Baroque, Classical and Romantic eras, in the process absorbing then discarding influences such that his mature idiom seems not so much invented as essentialised.

1874-83

Arising out of his playing, Busoni had been composing for over six months before his Marcia funebre (BV9) of February 1874, two months before his eighth birthday, its gaucheness duly captured by Ira Maria Witoschynskyj, who also tackles the rather more buoyant La canzone del cacciatore (BV12) from that September.

Otherwise, the survey by Holger Groschopp (2) has the most extensive coverage of this first creative decade – a timespan throughout which Busoni wrote and published regularly. That he later regretted such industriousness need not detract from the actual quality of much from this period, which puts him firmly in the company of such adolescents as Mendelssohn, Enescu or Korngold. Certain individual pieces would even now make appealing encores – notably the dextrous Scherzo (BV62) of July 1877, the aptly titled Menuetto capriccioso (BV124) of October 1879 or the atmospheric Danza notturna (BV189) from June 1882. Yet it is the sets of piano pieces that really stand out, starting with Cinq Pièces (BV71) from 1877, which amounts to a Baroque suite whose highlights are its taciturn Preludio and its genial penultimate Étude.

Busoni’s rapid evolution can readily be gauged through these sets. Suite campestre (BV81) of 1878 yields an idealised if never sentimental overview of rural life in its mysterious ‘L’Orgia’ or soulful ‘Preghiera della Sera’, to which Geoffrey Douglas Madge is notably attentive. The harmonic archaisms of Danze antiche (BV126) of 1879 are deftly applied – not least by Wolf Harden (9) in its elegant Gavotta or lively Bourrée; from 1880, Tre Pezzi nelle stile antico (BV159) has a more sophisticated approach borne out in its improvisatory central Sonatine.

Busoni’s most ambitious project of this period, a cycle of 24 Préludes (BV181), was completed in May 1881 and selections featured in Busoni’s recitals across the ensuing decade. Following the cycle of fifths (C to D minor) as earlier adopted by Chopin, the teenager pivots between Classical form and Romantic expression in miniatures whose sum outweighs its contents. Groschopp (2), Harden (8) and Madge make its case, Alberto Boischio emphasises the real imagination of its pianism and Trevor Barnard wrests audible unity from its diversity.

Any latent pictorial aspect has become overt in the ‘six characteristic pieces’ that comprise Una festa di villaggio (BV185) from December 1881 – its day-long traversal taking in events sacred and secular, fusing innocence with experience as conveyed by Groschopp (2) and even more tellingly by Witoschynskyj, whose ‘Notte’ is an evocative and affecting finale. Racconti fantastici (BV100) continues this approach into 1882 via competing fugal lines of ‘Duello’, fairy-tale evocation of ‘La caverna di Steenfoll’ and supernatural imagery of ‘Klein Zaches’. Groschopp (2) and Madge are respectively lucid and playful in its Schumannesque vignettes, as they are in the gracious ‘Dama’, other-worldly ‘Astrologo’ and ardent ‘Trovatore’ of Macchiette medioevali (BV194) from 1883, with which Busoni bids farewell to his youth.

1883-95

Busoni’s late teenage years spent in Vienna and Leipzig, and his rapid emerging at the forefront of younger virtuosos is reflected directly in his music from the prolific year of 1883. Notice is given in Trois Morceaux (BV197) – its sequence of an agile Scherzo, undogmatic Prélude et Fugue then suave Scène de ballet relished by Harden (3). More substantial are Six Études (BV203) dedicated to Brahms, whose Opp 76 and 79 inform their rhythmic muscularity and textural density, although as Daniel Blumenthal demonstrates there is also comparable harmonic clarity and technical finesse. Busoni envisaged 18 such pieces: themes from the (still unrecorded) 15th, ‘En forme d’Adagio’ (BV198), found their way into his Piano Concerto, while the 17th, ‘En forme de Variations’, is formally ingenious and expressively diverse.

From late 1883, the Piano Sonata in F minor (BV204) is dedicated to Anton Rubinstein – his A minor Sonata is a decisive influence on its robustly integrated Allegro and rhapsodic if never prolix central Andante. Liszt comes decisively to the fore in the closing Allegro – this ‘Nella guesa d’un’improvvisazione’ a portent in its contrapuntal intricacy as Emanuele Arciuli and, even more so, Bruce Wolosoff demonstrate. Into 1884 and the Variationen und Fuge in freier Form über Fr. Chopin’s C-moll Präludium (BV213) makes the indelible 20th Prelude from Chopin’s Op 28 an ominous departure for 18 contrasted variations whose symphonic cohesion builds inexorably to the final fugue. Its dedicatee Carl Reinecke cannot have been left unmoved by its imposing totality, comprehensively conveyed by Harden (2) and Madge.

That he avoided continuing down this path suggests Busoni knew his future lay in composition rather than performance. The slightly earlier Zweite Ballettszene (BV209) wears its virtuosity unashamedly on its sleeve, as Harden (3) and Witoschynskyj make plain; the latter also revels in Fünf Variationen zu Siegfried Ochs’ ‘Kommt a Vogerl g’flogen’ (BV222) of 1886, its genial allusions to five different composers of likely unforeseen consequences. Two years on and the piano-duet interplay of Finnländische Volksweisen (BV227) is warmly confiding in the hands of Joseph Banowetz and Ronald Stevenson (Altarus AIRCD9044), while the scintillating wit of Zwei Klavierstücke (BV235) from 1889 is adeptly handled by Harden (3) – albeit through the more emotionally self-contained, even detached guise occasioned by their 1914 revision.

A 1913 revision is less interventionist concerning Vierte Ballet-Scene in Form eines Concert-Walzers (BV238) of 1894, an encore as exhilarating as any from this time as Harden (3) hears it. Harden (5) also offers a dependable take on 1895’s Sechs Stücke (BV241) with its animated ‘Frohsinn’, whimsical ‘Scherzino’ or stylised ‘Fantasia in modo antico’, Madge finding more depth in its moody ‘Schwermut’ and evocative ‘Finnische Ballade’. As the send-up of ‘Exeunt omnes’ resounds into silence, even Busoni could not have imagined what lay 12 years hence.

1907-09

The ensuing decade saw several key works – the Violin Concerto and Second Violin Sonata, Comedy Overture, Piano Concerto and Turandot Suite – but no further solo piano music until the Elegien (BV249) from the last months of 1907. There remains a paradox, of which Busoni must have been well aware, in that whereas those Six Pieces from 1895 anticipated (however obliquely) future compositions, these ‘Six New Piano Pieces’ (which is their subtitle) mostly draw upon earlier music and frequently look to the more distant past for their inspiration.

The exception is the first piece, ‘Nach der Wendung’, where Busoni sets out his new aesthetic via a Contemplation whose translucent harmonies and disembodied textures make explicit its being conceived ‘after the turning’, and which Roland Pöntinen (2) renders with lucid poise. The study in the Neapolitan mode that is ‘All’Italia’ is a condensation of the fourth movement from the Piano Concerto; its scintillating pianism is consummately rendered by Egon Petri (1). who studied with Busoni at an early age and embodies the composer’s interpretative thinking most directly (Busoni’s acoustic recordings and piano rolls exclude his own music). There follows the introspective chorale-prelude ‘Meine Seele bangt und hofft zu Dir’, its Bach connotations an ideal fit for the first section of Fantasia contrappuntistica and eloquently done by Sandro Ivo Bartoli (who couples them accordingly). ‘Turandot’s Frauengemach’ is an intermezzo of deftest whimsy as John Ogdon (1) delightfully conveys, while José Vianna da Motta relishes its dubious chinoiserie. The waltz ‘Die Nächtlichen’ is a more sinister item from the Turandot music and was first recorded by Claudio Arrau (in 1928) and is also subtly played by Svetlana Belsky. This set originally ended with the nocturne ‘Erscheinung’, its rarefication unerringly evoked by Eduard Steuermann, who also studied with Busoni.

The Elegien makes for an impressively integrated unity – whether of the initial six pieces, as Belsky and Steuermann present them, or with the addition two years later of the Berceuse (see below), as is evident from several other integral sets. Among these, David Wilde is notable for bringing out their antecedents in Liszt; Peter Donohoe palpably encompasses their emotional range and Carlo Grante (4) their pianistic resource. Marc-André Hamelin (2) has exemplary clarity, but Michele Campanella (2) arguably gets closest to their startling and disconcerting essence.

The next five years found Busoni at his most radical and exploratory. Not that this precludes grace or charm as in Nuit de Noël – the delicately impressionist esquisse from 1908 (BV251) that, in the hands of Pöntinen (3) or Victor Nicoara, exudes winsome poise. No less perceptive, Igor Levit (2) underlines its temporal and expressive proximity to the Berceuse (BV252) that, subsequently extended into the orchestral Berceuse élégiaque, also became the seventh of the Elegien. Cyril Huvé and Geoffrey Tozer tease out its innate poignancy, whereas Levit (1) links it conceptually and emotionally to Fantasia nach Johann Sebastian Bach (BV253), also from June 1909. Versions of three organ pieces here become a reliquary to Busoni’s father, blurring transcription and composition such that any clear distinction no longer applies, as Hamelin (1) demonstrates with his ingenious recital ‘The Composer-Pianists’, while pianists such as Andrea Padova and Ashley Wass do likewise with their very different Bach-themed anthologies. Petri brings them into potent accord, as does Ogdon (2) with his consistently rapt and searching account.

The conceptual peak of this phase is reached with the ‘sequence of piano pieces’ entitled An die Jugend (BV254) of June to August 1909. That its four books can be played separately has unfortunately encouraged pianists not to interpret this as the totality it undoubtedly is: one in which composition and transcription are again brought into indivisible yet provocative unity. The first book, ‘Preludietto, Fughetta ed Esercizio’, distils Busoni’s practice of the previous two years, its harmonic fluidity complemented by the contrapuntal dexterity of the second book, ‘Preludio, Fuga e Fuga figurata’, whose studies after Bach’s Fifth Prelude and Fugue (BWV850) from the ‘48’ are complemented by one where Busoni elides elements of both. The third book, ‘Giga, Bolero e Variazione’, frames an alluring take on the ‘fandango’ music from the third act of Mozart’s Figaro with a reworking then variations on his Gigue (K574), its playful inscrutability contrasting with the virtuosity of the fourth book, an ‘Introduzione e Capriccio’ endowing the fifth and 11th of Paganini’s solo Caprices with Lisztian abandon. Only in a complete performance, however, does this final book continue into an ‘Epilogo’ – Busoni’s recent thinking here projected into introspective music whose tonal and rhythmic freedom blazes a trail for those from the younger generation who might follow his example.

Among the regrettably few pianists who have recorded An die Jugend complete, Harden (1) gives a cohesive overview of its content and Madge delineates its individual volumes with no mean character. Most persuasive is Grante (4), not least for sublimating its recourse to earlier composers into a methodical continuity whose trajectory from the Modern, via the Baroque, to the Classical and Romantic epochs culminates in that of the Future that is the more startling for its understatement. Hopefully more pianists will take on the challenge made 115 years ago.

1910-12

An die Jugend is Busoni’s conceptually most ambitious work from this period, while Fantasia contrappuntistica (henceforth FC) is his grandest and most virtuosic. His desire to complete the 14th Contrapunctus from Die Kunst der Fuge initially came to fruition in the Grosse Fuge (BV255) of March 1910. Rarely revived, it is ably realised by Groschopp (1) in his collection of transcriptions. Just three months later, Busoni had extended it into what he designated the ‘Edizione definitiva’ (BV256) and it is this version that is most frequently performed today.

The plan for this edition was specified by Busoni in a much-reproduced diagram. The primary change from that preliminary version is a ‘Preludio corale’, a slightly abbreviated version of the Third Elegy now emphasising those formal and expressive innovations of the intervening years. Out of its mystery and equivocation emerges the methodical Fuga I, which unfolds as in Bach’s torso, followed accordingly by the tensile Fuga II then the subdued Fuga III that introduces the B-A-C-H motif at the point where Bach’s manuscript breaks off. Reaching its (likely?) end, it is followed by a stealthy Variazione I, playful Variazione II and impetuous Variazione III that open out the music’s harmonic dimensions prior to a suitably spontaneous Cadenza. This in turn makes way for Fuga IV, the quadruple fugue whose textural density is galvanised by pianism visceral in its impact, and which subsides into the Chorale with its veiled allusion to the opening music. From here the work heads into a Stretta that aligns its main motifs into a close of thunderous affirmation – Bach and Busoni having become as one.

Its length (some 30 minutes) and complexity meant there were no recordings of FC until the post-war era. The earliest, a live broadcast from 1953 that has not been issued commercially (it can be heard via YouTube), is still among the finest: Noel Mewton-Wood was a pianist with profound appreciation of the humanity behind such virtuosity, and this, allied with his secure yet flexible technique, makes for a riveting listen. More so, overall, than the roughly contemporaneous account by Alfred Brendel (1): this is one of his earliest commercial recordings (soon to be reissued by APR) and is a fascinating document that, while it predicates the Bachian aspect above the Busonian to a degree Brendel (3) later reassessed in his notably subjective readings of the Third and Sixth Elegies, indicates a keen interpretative sensibility – one, even this early in his career, fully aware of the historical context. The June 1956 recording of FC by Busoni’s pupil Egon Petri (2), is the antithesis of Brendel’s classicism, hugely virtuosic and grandiose, if somewhat lacking in subtlety and refinement.

Most later recordings come somewhere between these relative poles – hence the lucid detachment of Hamish Milne and kinetic immediacy of Grante (2), the stark contours of Jan Michiels and searching grandeur of Bartoli; the objective virtuosity of Madge and confiding subjectivity of Lowell Liebermann (a notable composer in his own right). Levit (2) pushed these boundaries still further with a reading as interpretatively daring as it is technically perfect. Yet surely the most complete response is from Ogdon (2), his conceptual grasp and tonal eloquence eschewing any sense of this music being beholden to Bach’s, Busoni’s or our own time in what is one of the great recordings of any masterpiece.

Busoni did not stop there and, in 1912, made a scaled-down version – this ‘Edizione minore’ (BV256a) reducing FC to the truncation of its opening chorale prelude followed by the four fugues, in what is perhaps of value more as a means of preparation than for actual performance, but Harden (11) makes a resolute case, as does Madge, of that preludial section. Of more intrinsic value is the version for two pianos (BV256b) from 1921, when Busoni was at a very different stage in his development. Here the continuity has been streamlined and the virtuosity is more angular, with brief but strategic cuts to the fugues and a conclusion that adumbrates a brave though speculative new world of possibilities. Ogdon pointedly incorporates its ending into his solo recording, whereas the seamless interplay of Aldo Ciccolini and Aldo Orvieto brings out an unanticipated pathos (Naxos 8 574086). Most compelling are Peter Serkin and Richard Goode, their Marlboro Festival reading (on a Sony download) exuding that caught-on-the-wing freedom and lack of inhibition that Busoni was demonstrably at pains to communicate.

Just two months after the ‘definitive’ edition of FC, Busoni set out on a very different course. Running across the next decade and affording it a degree of creative continuity are sequences of orchestral Elegies and piano Sonatinas – between them testament to that contraction but never reduction of ambition he pursued thereafter. Notably well contrasted in aim and content, the Sonatinas are among the most recorded of Busoni’s piano works, though integral editions are still only a few in number. Hamelin (2) exhibits consistent virtues of clarity and insight, Nicoara places them within an intriguing context of comparable late works, and Jeni Slotchiver exudes elegance and allure in equal measure. Most absorbing is that by Paul Jacobs, his analytical yet imaginative accounts conveying an authority and integrity equalled by few.

Finished in August 1910, the First Sonatina (BV257) revisits An die Jugend – specifically its Preludietto and Epilogo (the two ‘original’ sections), for what becomes a theme and seven variations – its more exploratory tendencies now having greater objectivity, as Campanella (1) conveys with absolute poise. In July 1912 came Sonatina seconda (BV259) which, together with the orchestral Nocturne symphonique, represents Busoni’s furthest extension of tonality. This was motivated by a lengthy and combative correspondence with Schoenberg, from the second of whose Op 11 piano pieces he made a ‘concert interpretation’ (potently rendered by Daniel Barenboim on Warner 4509 98256-2) whose expanding of keyboard space and predicating of timbral finesse connects with Liszt’s late pieces then on to the present work. That its dialectical progress from agitation, via aggression, to resignation responds equally well to the impetuousness of Belsky, the pellucidity of Huvé and the sardonicism of Tozer (inter alia) confirms that, for Busoni, music was not invented but rather envisaged as a pre-existent entity, the challenges posed not so much needing to be overcome as absorbed into an ever-expanding realm of possibilities relative to each other. Emergent from this apparent rending of musical syntax, then, a whole new integration became not merely possible but inevitable.

1915-21

The best explanation of Busoni’s concept of Junge Klassizität (‘Young’ or ‘Youthful Classicism’) is through those pieces composed either side of its ‘defining’ in 1920. Preparation was made in 1915 with the Indianisches Tagebuch (BV267), these ‘four piano studies on motifs from the American Redskins’ effectively a sonatina whose animation and winsomeness leave behind abstraction for a music more equable and humane; hence the artlessness of Gianluca Cascioli, Pöntinen (1) or Edward Weiss – another pupil whose artistry comes over unabated in his one Busoni recording. Hardly less worthy of note is Improvisation über das Bachsche Chorallied ‘Wie wohl ist mir, o Freund der Seele’ (BV271) for two pianos of 1916, its subtly objectified eloquence no less involving as Alan Schiller and John Humphreys hear it (Naxos 8 557443).

The four remaining sonatinas are notable for an oblique if pertinent take on their musical past. The five brief movements of the Third Sonatina (BV268) were conceived for harpsichord, on which it has been recorded by Sumina Arihashi (Hänssler CD98 503); this medium, along with its dedication ‘ad usam infantis’, infers an unaffected naivety tellingly conveyed by Petri or, 62 years later and more knowingly while no less dextrously, by Thomas Adès. From 1917, the Fourth Sonatina (BV274) is subtitled ‘in diem nativitatis Christi MCMXVII’ and its three continuous sections invoke an enchanting if avowedly unsentimental image of Christmastide. Groschopp (1) renders it accordingly, although it is another Busoni pupil, Michael Zadora, who gets closest to its interpretative heart. Groschopp is hardly less attuned to the Fifth Sonatina (BV280) of 1918, a sonatina brevis subtitled ‘In Signo Joannis Sebastiani Magni’ that freely reworks Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in D minor (BWV905, though now considered spurious).

The Sixth Sonatina (BV284) unashamedly invokes opera, the five continuous sections of this ‘Kammer-Fantasie über Carmen’ drawing on five of its melodies in a spirit of affection shorn of affectation. Petri and especially Zadora bring out its playful profundity, the young Claudio Arrau renders it with scintillating verve, in the first instance of Busoni on record (it was recorded in November 1927 and February 1928). Ogdon (1) states his Busoni credentials with alacrity and Anna Kravtchenko savours it fully. Donohoe distils expressive poise from its volatility, while Stephen Hough catches its theatricality in a sure highlight of his anthology ‘Vida breve’.

If this piece has become the most popular of Busoni’s late piano works, the Toccata (BV287) is his most substantial. Completed in September 1920, it has the formal dimensions of a sonatina but the emotional impact of a full-length sonata – three continuous parts taking in a Preludio that harnesses the supernatural aura of his opera Die Brautwahl to coruscating pianism, a Fantasia that subjects a lyrical theme from his opera-in-progress Doktor Faust to seven speculative variations, and a Ciaconna whose cumulative rhythmic drive makes for a close startling in its virtuosity. There are impressively lucid accounts by Hamelin (2), Tozer and, more studied if no less involving, Werner Bärtschi; Steuermann underlines its relevance to inter-war modernism, while Brendel (2) has an intellectual reach making one regret he so rarely recorded this composer. Barely one month later Busoni wrote Tanzwalzer (BV288), an orchestral waltz-sequence in memory of Johann Strauss: as recorded by Harden (3) in Zadora’s idiomatic transcription, it complements the earlier work with its skittish yet genial humour.

Two slighter but entirely characteristic pieces are worth mentioning. The aphoristic Prologo (BV279) is all Busoni completed of his projected Notturni in 1918 – its distanced character, adeptly rendered by Hamelin (2) or Madge, not far from Drei Albumblätter (BV289). Here the reworking of a placid 1917 ‘album-leaf’ for flute and piano is joined by two others from 1921: one which has a shimmering fugato texture, then one ‘in the style of a chorale prelude’ whose ingenuity draws the best from Grante (3), Pöntinen (3) or, especially, Andrea Padova.

1922-24

Busoni’s remaining piano works are largely concerned with his Klavierübung that, alongside Doktor Faust, dominates these final years. Published in five parts during 1918-22, the first edition revisits two pieces written 38 years apart. Zehn Variationen über ein Präludium von Chopin (BV213a) is a radical overhaul of his grandest teenage statement, its heady virtuosity now channelled into a more laconic display where means become subordinate to ends. By so reducing its variations and replacing its fugue with a tensile final scherzo, Busoni fashions a set of variations whose technical aspects are instructive while never didactic and, in musical terms, highly entertaining. Such is conveyed by Ogdon (1), with Groschopp (1), Harden (5) and John Buttrick (the only pianist with studio accounts of both versions) stressing its formal clarity a little at the expense of emotional candour. Perpetuum mobile (BV293) of February 1922 truncates the latter half of the (unrecorded) concertante Romanza e Scherzoso from a year earlier, its lithe figuration captured by Hamelin (2), Pöntinen (2) and Veronica Jochum.

Both these works reappear in the second edition of Klavierübung, published posthumously as 10 Books in 1925 and where the Chopin Variations are further reduced to nine with the omission of a Fantasia that was its last tangible link with Busoni’s musical past – Jonathan Plowright makes a fine case for this revision in his fascinating recital ‘Hommage à Chopin’. The most substantial addition, Sieben kurze Stücke zur Pflege des polyphonen Spiels (BV296) started out as five studies in the spring of 1923 and is recorded thus by Harden (7) and Valerie Tryon – the former as agile in the second and third as the latter is alluring in the first, fourth and fifth; this last, a paraphrase on the ‘Armed Men’ music from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, is of subtlest finesse. Busoni prefaced these with a quizzical Preludietto then concluded with an Andante tranquillo from November 1923 whose imaginative use of the ‘third’ (sustaining) pedal was a feature of his last recitals. Jochum and Madge relish their contrasted characters, whereas Hamelin (2) and Pöntinen (2) favour a more unified sequence. They along with the equally perceptive Grante (1) make a fine showing in Prélude et Étude en arpèges (BV297), written in February 1923 for a French treatise and premiered although never recorded by Petri, their stratified textures and tonal obliqueness arresting musically while commanding technically.

Mentioning the Klavierübung should not exclude the numerous shorter pieces Busoni wrote for it whose musical qualities have long been overshadowed by their pedagogical purpose. These frequently take the guise of paraphrases or free transcriptions of music by earlier composers, indicated by their ‘nach …’ designation, but there are original compositions too. Groschopp (1) has recorded some of these, as has Harden in the final volume of his survey (Vol 13, 2023), but the most pertinent selection comes from Hamelin (2). Here one finds the combative Motive or Allegro and the impetuous Vivace moderato studies from the Fifth Staccato Book; above all, the mesmeric Veloce a leggiero study from the Fifth Trills Book previously recorded by Grante (1) which, from early January 1924, was Busoni’s last completed work and confirms that, working through the spirit of Bach and Mozart via Beethoven and Liszt, he was only too aware of what aspiring pianists needed to encompass in the age of Bartók and Prokofiev. That several had been intended for Doktor Faust further affirms their creative significance.

Recommendations

This age of streaming has the (presumable) advantage of making multiple versions of a single piece easily available, but a short-list of seminal works and recommended recordings remains worthwhile as a starting point. Busoni’s earliest phase is evident most completely in the 24 Preludes, precisely and personably rendered by Trevor Barnard; his adolescence from the first version of the Chopin Variations, energetically and resourcefully despatched by Wolf Harden; and his early maturity in the Sechs Stücke, its contrasts deftly integrated by Daniel Blumenthal. Michele Campanella continues to delight and provoke in the Elegien, while Igor Levit delivers an affective and cohesive Fantasia nach JS Bach. Carlo Grante pointedly underlines why An die Jugend needs experiencing as an organic and cumulative totality, while John Ogdon eloquently demonstrates Fantasia contrappuntistica as the veritable creative nexus between music’s past, present and future. Svetlana Belsky brings a confrontational immediacy to the ‘futurism’ of Sonatina seconda, whereas Roland Pöntinen makes the artless ingenuity of Indianisches Tagebuch hardly less relevant in terms of its being a cultural portent. Peter Donohoe winningly teases poise from behind the display in the Sixth Sonatina, while Alfred Brendel potently underlines the objectified radicalism of the Toccata as surely as Marc-André Hamelin does in the distilled though never abstruse modernity of Sieben kurze Stücke. All of these recordings start listeners at the top end of Busoni interpretation and should, hopefully, encourage a desire to explore further.

Busoni died prematurely with his life’s work far from complete: his magnum opus remained unfinished, his pianistic treatise relatively curtailed and his creative aesthetic still imperfectly defined. A century later, his reputation may have faded but his thinking has never been more relevant in terms of a Western tradition needing motivation so as not to retreat into insularity. Whether or not his piano music offers any answers, it affords a cultural context and suggests a way forwards. 

This article originally appeared in the Autumn 2024 issue of International Piano. Never miss an issue – subscribe today