Ferruccio Busoni in the Name of Liszt (English version)
I believe it cannot be deemed heretical to assert that Ferruccio Busoni still struggles to be accepted as one of the leading composers at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and that this difficulty lies primarily in the fact that the musician from Empoli was, throughout his life, many things at once: above all, a piano virtuoso; a natural-born pedagogue from the age of twenty-three in Helsinki, later teaching in Weimar, Vienna, Basel, and Boston; an intellectual and essayist with broad interdisciplinary interests (his friendships and a close reading of his correspondence bear witness to this); and, viewed from the narrow, petty standpoint of provincial Italianism, the discomfort of contending with an artist who, though born Italian, felt increasingly drawn toward the immeasurable musical archipelago of the Germanic sphere. This destiny aligns him with another great native figure, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, whose life and oeuvre similarly oscillated between Italian and Austrian influences, sometimes leaning one way, sometimes the other.
Yet very few have been able to ride the tiger of the Old Continent’s artistic-cultural Krisis—if by Krisis one means that multifaceted attempt to bring forth new movements capable of flourishing into sunlit clearings rich with developments and fertile discourse, or else petering out as a dead-end track overgrown with brambles, as Busoni managed to do with his compositional work. That work, it must be said, remains largely confined to connoisseurs, musicophiles, and insiders, while it still only brushes the feet and ankles of the wider public standing on today’s shore—a bulimic, compulsive consumer of the usual names in the musical firmament.
Therefore, every recording project that aims to bring to listeners—one hopes ever more numerous—pages from the Empoli composer’s oeuvre deserves to be welcomed with satisfaction. A case in point is the recent release by Da Vinci Classics, which committed to disc an especially compelling concert given by the Roman pianist Giovanni Bellucci on June 13 and 14, 2002, at the Auditorium Giovanni Agnelli in Turin’s Lingotto complex. The RAI recorded the event, featuring Daniele Callegari at the helm of the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, and focusing on concert works of Busoni that are little known (at least to the general public). Specifically, the disc presents Busoni’s own arrangement for piano and orchestra of Franz Liszt’s Rhapsodie Espagnole S. 254/R90, Folies d’Espagne et Jota Aragonese, as well as Busoni’s Concertino BV 292 for piano and orchestra, and the Indianische Fantasie op. 44 for piano and orchestra, BV 264.
Enriching this release, which marks a milestone for Edmondo Filippini’s label—its thousandth catalogue title—and to which we heartily wish the ominous apocryphal prophecy of “a thousand and no more” attributed to Christ does not apply, are the liner notes drafted at the time by Piero Rattalino. The Piedmontese critic and pedagogue penned these notes specifically for Bellucci in December 2004 for one of his albums, yet they have remained unpublished until now.
Linking Busoni’s name to his piano-and-orchestra output immediately brings to mind one of the most original and distinctive compositions of late European Romanticism: his hypertrophic, monumental, polymorphic Piano Concerto in C major, Op. XXXIX, KV 247, which even requires a male chorus singing a text by the Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger.
This work is very seldom performed, and its discographic recordings are just as rare reasons that Sergio Sablich has aptly explained by pointing out how listeners and institutions rely on rigid, preexisting frameworks that simply cannot accommodate an artistic personality as free and multifaceted as Ferruccio Busoni’s.
In terms of both performance and recording, the pieces Giovanni Bellucci chose for his Turin concert fare no better, since they too have always existed on the margins of concert programming and disc releases.
Hence the Roman pianist’s determination to present such a concentrated dose of Busoni’s orchestral-piano pages in a single concert is truly remarkable.
Delving into the specifics and following the tracklist order, it comes as no surprise that a true Liszt specialist like Giovanni Bellucci chose to include in his program this arrangement by the Empoli composer of a work by his Hungarian colleague. Busoni knew not only the Kantor’s keyboard output inside out but also Liszt’s entire oeuvre—an indispensable point of reference for late-nineteenth-century pianism.
It’s interesting that Busoni opted for his own orchestral transcription of one of Liszt’s lesser-known pieces, the Rhapsodie Espagnole, which Liszt likely composed around 1863 for solo piano. More than thirty years later, in 1894, the young Busoni decided to recast it as a concerto for piano and orchestra. Calling it a “transcription” may seem a stretch, since Busoni adhered closely to the original score, his main goal being not only to accommodate the work’s technical fireworks and virtuosic flair but above all to highlight Liszt’s characteristic timbral effects. He did so by exploiting a richly armed orchestra: piccolo, three flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, triangle, castanets, tambourine, cymbals, strings. With such forces at his disposal, Busoni revealed in amplifying the alternating dances that infuse the two distinct yet inseparable episodes, aptly titled Follie di Spagna and Jota Aragonese.
The story behind the Concertino BV 292 deserves to be told to shed light on its distinctive makeup, since it comprises two separate pieces: the Konzertstück Op. 31a, dating from 1890, and the Romanza e Scherzoso Op. 54, penned a full thirty-one years later.
Let us begin with the first movement, which Busoni—then still an obscure instructor at the Helsinki Conservatory—composed in order to participate in what may be considered the first true international competition for piano composition and performance. This contest was conceived and overseen by one of the era’s most celebrated virtuosi, the Russian Anton Rubinstein. For the event, Busoni produced the Konzertstück and performed it on August 27 in St. Petersburg under the baton of Moritz Köhler, ultimately securing first prize.
With hindsight, this is hardly a masterpiece; Busoni’s victory owes much to the fact that the St. Petersburg competition, limited to composers aged twenty to twenty-six, attracted neither established figures nor rival concertos of sufficient calibre to challenge that of the young Empoli-born musician.
Yet even though Busoni refrained from flattering Rubinstein or the jury unduly, the Konzertstück remains a work “tailor-made” to captivate the great Russian virtuoso. Its transcendental virtuosity—drawn directly from the Lisztian tradition to which the young Busoni was devoting himself—and its sweeping monumental character (which borders on rhetorical excess to modern ears) perfectly aligned with contemporary tastes. Indeed, one need only hear the Allegro following the slow Introduction to appreciate this fully, especially upon reaching the cadenza, where Busoni transforms the moment into an elephantine fugato.
By contrast, the Busoni of thirty years later—who now commanded the sonic realm like a god on earth—fully acknowledged that youthful misstep. Rather than renounce or discard the work, which had been printed in 1892 by Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig, he chose to bring the circle to completion by adding a second movement, the Romanza e Scherzoso, dedicating it to another great Italian pianist and brilliant composer, Alfredo Casella, with whom he had long been friends.
With this kind of addendum, the Empoli composer christened the “new” two-faced score Concertino, as it is presented and performed today. That said, the work inevitably bears the marks of its heterogeneous structure.
The Indianische Fantasie, Op. 44, composed between 1913 and 1914, exemplifies the “freedom” Sergio Sablich described as the very basis of Ferruccio Busoni’s aesthetic sensibility, even before his musical one. Here, freedom signifies an inexhaustible curiosity and openness to styles far removed from the strict Western tradition.
In this case, the starting point was Busoni’s two American tours in 1910 and 1911, which reinforced—on the other side of the Atlantic—his reputation as an absolute piano virtuoso (emphasizing once again his identity as performer more than composer).
On those occasions, thanks to his former New York student Natalie Curtis, Busoni encountered—and was dazzled by—numerous original melodies of Native American music that she had collected and catalogued. Thrilled by the discovery, he initially planned a piano-and-orchestra piece titled Rapsodia indiana. However, once back in Europe he reconsidered the entire project, ultimately producing the work we now know as Indianische Fantasie, first performed in Berlin in 1914 under Alexis Birnbaum’s baton with Busoni at the piano. Its success—and fame—lasted only as long as Busoni himself was at the keyboard; after his death the piece gradually sank into the vast sea of oblivion, like many of his other works.
Emblematically, this Fantasia—structured in the movements Fantasy, Canzona, and Finale—both begins and ends in C major, already hinting at the breath of hope and optimism with which Busoni envisioned a concept of “universal music” embodied in this composition.
The compositional melting pot contains a rich mix of elements united by an extraordinarily varied and captivating palette of timbres, with the piano as the undisputed protagonist, powerful and commanding in its contrapuntal role. It is precisely this contrapuntal framework that underpins Busoni’s characteristic formal design, channelling the continuous flow of passages and the dialogue between solo instrument and orchestral accompaniment.
In the face of such a program, it must be said that a performer fully at ease with pianistic technique and Liszt’s repertoire has a huge advantage—a truth made all too clear by Giovanni Bellucci, a true champion of Liszt.
Aside from the Rhapsodie Espagnole—where the Roman pianist moves as if in his own salon, sculpting the timbre with Liszt’s trademark orchestra-in-the-keyboard effect, now crystalline, now thunderous, and serving as an appetizer for the entire concert—Bellucci’s readings of the other two Busonian works avoid the trap of merely echoing the Hungarian master, as if reducing Busoni to Liszt’s hapless nephew.
This restraint is evident in the stern tempo Bellucci adopts at the opening of the Konzertstück, where the bittersweet atmosphere of late Romanticism already presses in with unrelenting force.
In short, the image of Liszt as guiding beacon may hold in that precise moment, but everything has its limit. As Busoni himself hinted, Bellucci underscores this boundary by balancing any excess with strokes of severity and formal order—a clear homage to Busoni’s other tutelary deity, the Kantor. He is aided in this by the orchestra’s measured play of light and dark, which allows Bellucci to disentangle structural coherence from sheer virtuosity.
With his Romanza e Scherzoso approach, Bellucci/Dante waves a little hand to Liszt/Virgil, rolls up his sleeves, picks up Busoni with tweezers, and dissects him piece by piece—turning the dishes of the feast decisively more flavourful.
Swimming in a slimy, greasy, unhealthy orchestral sea (an excellent point of departure), the Roman pianist delivers a sonic report in which the blessed restlessness of Busoni’s final years flows freely.
The timbre is aptly dense, even almost hesitant at times, only to “light up” thereafter, although the shadows of the instrumental accompaniment never settle into the steady tempo of a sunny day.
With the eruption of the Scherzoso, Bellucci shows us that, at heart, Busoni—like Zarathustra—knew how to dance; his dance never yields to excess (Ordnung… Ordnung…), but remains skilfully disciplined and canonical, built on a timbre that caresses. It reveals how, in his last period, Busoni placed his faith in a hope for the absolute, the all-encompassing, projected by the mystery of sound. Light as equilibrium, radiation as balm, the keyboard as a Lamia lying in wait.
The ethno-sonic anthropologist in Busoni’s Indianische Fantasie finds Bellucci free to shift into fifth-gear autobahn mode, transforming the keyboard into a self-driving Tesla and savouring every contour of Busoni’s score. His forward momentum is disarming in its agogic projection, a magnetic resonance that probes every nuance hidden in the luxuriant jungle Busoni conjured from the kaleidoscope of Native melodies placed before him by Curtis.
It’s as though a canvas by Henri Rousseau, the Customs Officer, were suddenly set in motion—helped along by the vines the orchestral sections fling at the soloist, each one snatched up and spun into living, pulsating material.
Yet this never becomes a macho show—“Me Tarzan, you Jane”—because Bellucci tempers it all with a miracle of liquidity, a crystalline timbral clarity that literally melts into a murmuring stream (the Canzona!), reminding us that Busoni was a master of “folding back,” of the sweetest inspiratory/expiratory contractions, of a pianistic colour perfectly wedded to the orchestra (anyone familiar with his Doktor Faustus will know what I mean).
In the miraculous transition from Canzona to Finale, Busoni’s exhilaration bursts forth—no cataclysmic Vajont flood but a placid pool in which Amfortas finds momentary solace in the healing waters of new sonic revelation.
A heartfelt thanks must go to Daniele Callegari, who succeeded in imprinting the orchestral performance with a delightfully relentless march—a jolt of energy that feeds directly into the material on the keyboard.
Not to mention that the purely orchestral passages were sculpted with a febrile intensity all too rare in our native ensembles. Whether it was the singular nature of the evening or the benevolent gaze of Saint Cecilia, anyone present at that event/rite must consider themselves fortunate and anointed for the rest of their experience as a spectator and enthusiast.
The only slightly off note, at least compared to the artistic grandeur of the recording, lies in the sound capture—whose engineer goes unnamed in the CD booklet. It’s unclear whether the recording was intended for eventual disc release or solely for the RAI television broadcast.
The technical shortcomings manifest in several areas:
- Dynamics lack power and appear weakened, crying out for a substantial boost of “potassium and magnesium.”
- Transient response feels dull, most noticeable in the orchestral passages.
- Soundstage reconstruction is problematic, with the orchestra placed too far back and the piano unnaturally close, creating a spatial “void” and limiting depth and width beyond the speakers.
- Tonal balance fares somewhat better: the piano’s middle and lower registers are relatively precise, but orchestral sections—especially woodwinds and brass—sound slightly unfocused.
- Detail suffers from the dynamic’s deficit, with the solo piano lacking physical presence and the orchestra’s three-dimensional projection appearing flat.
Andrea Bedetti
Ferruccio Busoni – Works for Piano and Orchestra
Giovanni Bellucci (piano) · Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI · Daniele Callegari (conductor)
CD Da Vinci Classics C01000