Most Busoni enthusiasts will no doubt have acquired Daniel Barenboim's complete recording of Die Brautwahl, which appeared last year (Teldec, 10/99). The orchestral suite from it makes a fascinating introduction to its world, but enthusiasts should be warned that this is no mere assembly of orchestral extracts, and thus dispensable if you have the parent work. Each movement, in fact, combines elements from different parts of the opera so that each can concentrate on one of its aspects; the movements' titles are, respectively, 'Ghostly', 'Lyrical', 'Mystical', 'Hebraic' and 'Merry'. The first is a fantastic dance, the second a soberly coloured distillation of the opera's love music, the third more solemn than mystical, while the fourth, a portrait of the alchemist Manasse, builds sinister power from an obsessive ostinato and a dark, rather oriental theme before abruptly exploding into a malevolent Scherzo. If Busoni had had a chance to rename this impressive movement in the light of his last and greatest opera he would have called it 'Mephistophelian'. 'Merry', drawn from the introduction and end of Act 1, is cheerful indeed, but there's a hint of disquiet as well.
From nearly 20 years earlier, the puzzlingly titled Geharnischte Suite ('Suite in Armour'), after a rather perfunctorily constructed Prelude and a cheerful rather than martial 'War dance', gets closer to Busoni's Faustian side in the sombre, eventually vehement slow procession of 'Funeral Monument' and the powerful syncopations of 'Assault' (which later does become martial, but bizarrely, even sardonically so).
In short, the two suites make a very worthwhile coupling. I had not heard the Timisoara Philharmonic Orchestra before, nor Jean-Francois Antonioli as a conductor (he has a fine reputation as a pianist). They are first-class, and he has an acute ear for Busoni's orchestral sonority. The recording is rich and colourful. '