Ferruccio Busoni: The Late Works
Busoni’s original compositions, celebrated and reviled in equal measure though they were already during his lifetime. In the era of great artistic and historical upheaval, between Late Romanticism and modernity, Busoni forged his own unique and fascinating musical language, from the Brahmsian works of his youth and the Faustian masterpieces of his maturity. The works offered on this album trace some of this journey of transformation, from the quiet revolution of the Elegies (published in 1908) to the tortured darkness of the Second Sonatina (1912) to the transcendent pianism of the Variations on a Chopin Prelude (1922 in their final version).
Ravello Records
Release Date: February 8th, 2019
Catalog #: RR8007
Reviews
"Belsky is untroubled by technical challegnes and offers clarity and crispness...engrossing music played with strength and enthusiasm... Belsky's recording is ravishing and reveals the genius of the composer"
M . L. Rantala, Hyde Park Herald, 1/2/2020
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"Belsky offers a totally winning reading, as replete with technical ability and musical sympathy as the composer could wish for. .... as performer she gives the Sonatina an absorbing, moody reading that does it full justice. ... Belsky’s performances are delightful in their own right. ... I’m grateful to have my misguided image of Busoni corrected in such a thoughtful and thoroughly enjoyable way. Warmly recommended with a suggestion that you read Belsky’s notes, too. The whole package is persuasive, to say the least."
-Huntley Dent, FANFARE Magazine
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"The Sonatina Seconda (1912) for instance, demonstrates that Belsky has Busoni’s novel prestidigital demands well in hand. A beguiling alternative with the table spread by the scholar-artist’s concise annotations."
-Adrian Corleonis, FANFARE Magazine
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"I have enjoyed this performance by Svetlana Belsky, and whilst it might not replace Marc-André Hamelin’s more comprehensive set of the late piano music, it does make a fine single-disc alternative to his three-disc set. In his ‘Elegies’, including his version of ‘Greensleeves’, ... Belsky is particularly good."
-Stuart Sillitoe, Music Web International, 5/8/2019
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"It is plain she is an excellent artist and Busoni enthusiasts should not hesitate to get this."
-American Record Guide
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"This disc is an important document. With it, Belsky reveals a little-known side of this composer whose original works are refreshingly innovative for their time."
-The Whole Note, 4/26/2019
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"The Sonatina Seconda (1912) begins the program. How modern, how dissonant, how amazing for its time, rousing, and how well played. This is worth the price of admission alone. I never paid enough attention to later Busoni, so this woke me up and made me very aware and very pleased. Ms. Belsky plays it all like she owns it, and indeed she does."
-Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review, 3/27/2019
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"Svetlana Belsky offers a fascinating tour of some of the notoriously difficult, complex, unclassifiable-as-to-style music of Busoni on a new Ravello CD. Belsky ... thoroughly plumbs the depths of this music. Belsky seems to have a remarkable intuitive understanding of these Busoni pieces, in addition to having spent considerable time studying their intricacies and performance challenges. Her readings are wholly convincing and do a first-rate job of conveying the many facets of this very difficult composer’s complex and highly personal piano music.
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"Svetlana Belsky posa en relleu el saludable eclecticisme harmònic, amb nombrosos dibuixos arpegiats, i el delicat estil contrapuntístic de Busoni. ... El pedal impecable de Belsky fon les harmonies en una atmosfera elegant de paisatges sonors flotants. ... Les versions de la pianista Svetlana Belsky d’aquestes obres pianístiques són un bon exemple de suavitat, de regularitat rítmica i, molt especialment, d’una gran subtilitat expressiva. (Svetlana Belsky highlights the laudable harmonic eclecticism, the harmonic tone-painting, and the delicate contrapuntal style of Busoni. ... Belsky's impeccable pedaling melts the harmonies in an elegant atmosphere of floating sound landscapes. ... The pianist Svetlana Belsky's versions of these piano works are a good example of polish, rhythmic precision and, especially, of great expressive subtlety."
-Sonograma Magazine, 2/28/2019
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"SVETLANA BELSKY/Ferruccio Busoni-The Late Works: A Russian pianist that fell under the spell of the Italian composer while doing her studies now plays her passion from her perch as an instructor at University of Chicago. Obviously a gal who doesn't let grass grow under her feet, her playing shows she's not afraid to sweep away the curtain and play like it really matters. A stunning solo recital that should go a long way toward getting her mentioned more widely in the same breath as other contemporary piano masters, she makes a great case for music being more than just a bunch of notes. Great work on some great works."
-Midwest Record, 2/13/2019
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"Marrying awe-inducing technical capabilities to an artistic intuition of mind-boggling depth, Belsky manages to enter the inner sanctum of Busoni's creative thought, no matter the style, with miraculous panache. The pianist effortlessly captures the soul of the piece, regardless of whether the composer furiously tears down form and tonality in Sonatina Seconda, whether he reminisces in Chopin's lyricism in his Nine Variations, or whether he allows himself a rather off-color compositional remark by citing "Greensleeves" in Turandots Frauengemach. Belsky makes all these eccentricities sound perfectly plausible, imperative even; and she may well be the first pianist to accomplish this feat."
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Program Notes
Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) has earned an undisputed place among the greatest pianists of his time, perhaps of all time, both for his titanic technique and his unapologetic rejection of Late Romantic performance practices. His playing, his teaching and his writings continue to shape how and what we pianists play today. Busoni is still remembered as well for his innovative approach to J.S. Bach scholarship through his work as editor, and especially for his ever-popular transcriptions of Bach’s organ works.
Less well known are Busoni’s original compositions, celebrated and reviled in equal measure though they were already during his lifetime. In the era of great artistic and historical upheaval, between Late Romanticism and modernity, Busoni forged his own unique and fascinating musical language, from the Brahmsian works of his youth and the Faustian masterpieces of his maturity. The works offered on this album trace some of this journey of transformation, from the quiet revolution of the Elegies (published in 1908) to the tortured darkness of the Second Sonatina (1912) to the transcendent pianism of the Variations on a Chopin Prelude (1922 in their final version).
Busoni’s great opera Doktor Faust, incomplete at the time of his death in 1924, occupied him for the two final decades of his life. All other works composed during this period bear an imprint of Busoni’s Faustian thought process to some extent. Sonatina Seconda, perhaps his greatest piano masterpiece, even contributed some of the opera’s most memorable material, the mystical march which accompanies the “students from Krakow” who bring Faust the instruments of magic by which he calls upon dark spirits and seals his fate. One searches in vain for the plot in the Sonatina. Instead, it is a study of a man’s reaction to dark magic – both his abject terror and his inevitable surrender to its irresistible sweetness. The Sonatina opens with a single line which strives ever upward. The peacefulness is shattered by a dissonant and furious pianistic assault, a brilliant portrayal of a man’s fugue state. Into this enters the mystical march, bringing with it mood shifts from hopeful, to feebly resistant, to horrified to willingly capitulating. Reality dissolves into a magical mental landscape. Then the march appears again as the magic departs, and whoever (or whatever) remains seems to laugh and dance a quiet but triumphant jig. At the premiere in Milan in 1913, the audience rioted. More than a hundred years later, Sonatina never fails to provoke a reaction.
Busoni composed his pianistic tour de force, the Variations on a Chopin Prelude, in 1884. The final version, which is heard here, appeared in 1922 as part of his Klavierübung. The specifics of the revisions are fascinating. The nine variations, already forward-looking in the 80s, with their extended tonality, tight structure and their ability to extract every possible nuance of sound from the instrument, are kept intact. A long and rambling Fantasy is removed, but a terse, fugal, atonal, and thoroughly Faustian introduction is added. Busoni, the music scholar and historian, arranges the variations roughly in the ancient double-variation tradition, where each variation uses shorter note values than its predecessor. But at the root of the Variation structure is the peculiar, tri-partite structure of Chopin’s C minor Prelude itself. Without the now-removed Fantasy, there are now 9 variations, arranged in groups of 3, each variation more or less obviously divided into 3 parts.
Published in 1908, the Six Elegies represent something of a manifesto of Busoni’s new compositional style. "My entire personal vision I put down at last and for the first time in the Elegies", he writes, and "the Elegies signify a milestone in my development. Almost a transformation. Hence the title, 'nach der Wendung'." Both compositionally and practically, these pieces form something of a bridge between Busoni’s earlier Romantic style and his future more modernist approach. Only No. 1, Nach der Wendung, a quiet exploration of triads and appoggiaturas, the most basic musical material, stands fully on its own. Nos. 2, the Barcarolle and Tarantella, with its glorious melodicity and superimposition of major and minor, is a reworking of earlier material (the Piano Concerto). The most popular Elegy, No. 4 (variations on “Greensleaves”, which Busoni mistakenly thought to be a Chinese folk tune), and the least favorably received, No. 5 (a most amazing vision of a Waltz) are from the Turandot Suite. No. 3, a modern take on a Chorale Prelude will become part of the later Fantasia contrappuntistica. No. 6, the hauting Erscheinung (Notturno) was used in the opera Die Brautwahl. Each of the Elegies is dedicated to one of Busoni’s piano students.
