One of the greats died 100 years ago today
Daily Comfort ZoneThere is a small plaque in Berlin marking the house where he lived. A piano competition in the Italian Tyrol where he grew up. And not much else on the face of the earth.
Ferruccio Busoni, who died on 27 July 1924 at the age of 58, was one of the early makers of the 20th century. A pianist of hypnotic power, he was the soloist most admired by Gustav Mahler, not just for his performances but for his boundless intellect and curiosity.
He married a Swede and settled in Berlin, propelling the city after 1918 into thhe central hub of musical modernism.
Not much is being done to mark his centenary, other than a BBC Proms performance by Ben Grosvenor and the LPO of his monumental piano concerto next month – 70 minutes long, and counting.
He was not the most concise of composers, but if I was organising a musical dinner party, Busoni would be the one I’d want sitting next to me.
I’m glad for this anniversary to be recognized, but the typos! Doesn’t anybody proofread these things?
Dont scold, I know by experiance how hard it is to get your speling rigt.
Sally
Thank you for this interesting article about one of Classical Music’s Titans. ‘Tis much preferrable over wretched Emma’s latest antics.
I’ve read the last public performance that Brahms attended was a Busoni recital.
Busoni was not born in Tyrol! He was born in Empoli, close to Florence, Tuscany, Italy
Yes, I think there’s a plaque on the house of his birth.
Apart from unrepresentative piano rolls very few recordings of this great pianist exist – mostly miniatures (as limited by the technology of the day). He was, by all accounts a colossus. One story relates to him playing Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ in Berlin. The audience was stunned into silence so affecting was the playing (oddly the greatest tribute a performer could receive!). Busoni rises from the piano, bows stiffly, walks off into the wings and, misunderstanding the silence says to a friend, “I see the fools do not understand the music,” walks back on stage and plays the whole piece again after which the roof nearly came down. (this story related to me through Ronald Stevenson whose own creative life was profoundly influenced by Busoni).
Emanuil Ivanov played the concerto (to stunning effect) in Birmingham a few weeks ago.
And Busoni was Kurt Weill’s teacher and inspiration, apart from Busoni’s own great achievements in composition (not least his opera) and the development of harmonic language. We have much to thank him for, and he deserves a more prominent place in musical history.
He had an obsession for one-legged women and at his performances in Berlin post-WWI, he always had a coterie of these around him.
I can’t say I know Busoni’s body of work that well, but his Piano Concerto is MAGNIFICENT and frankly my second-favorite piano concerto of them all, second only to Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto. Busoni’s piano concerto is such a life-affirming, dreamy, uplifting, and profoundly moving work that is incomparable. He openly quotes other composers in the 1st movement (I’ve yet to see anyone else note that the opening of Busoni’s concerto is an obvious homage to the opening of Schumann’s 2nd symphony), yet Busoni manages to make the work entirely his own.
It’s just absolutely brilliant. My two favorite performances are Garrick Ohlsson/Dohnanyi/Cleveland Orchestra, and Peter Donohoe/Mark Elder/BBC Symphony Orchestra (live).
With greatest happiness, I’ve been able to note my career as a professional musician was “book-ended” by
two performances of the Busoni Op.39.
1966 with Gunnar Johansen…2006 with Marc-Andre
Hamelin.
Stunning…haunting…totally memorable….
And listen to Peter Donohoe, after he finishes the FIENDISHLY difficult accompaniment to the chorus in the 5th movement…ERUPT like an imprisoned demon to
end the work……..
Peter Donohoe’s performance from the 1988 Proms was, arguably one of the greatest concerts I’ve ever attended. He swallowed the work whole in a venue which perfectly matched the acoustic, scale and ambition of the work. As I remember, the conductor, Kurt Masur was sitting in front of us scarcely incapable of containing his enthusiasm.
I could not agree more. In 1966 there was the centenary of Busoni’s birth, and the BBC third programme did quite sterling work in celebrating it. John Ogdon played the Concerto with Jascha Horenstein conducting, and the redoubtable Ronald Stevenson had a very informative hour talking about this great master.
Talking of the BBC, I believe that the BBC Symphony Orchestra are also programming the Busoni Piano Concerto on 1 November, at the Barbican in London, with Gerstein/Oramo. Pity about this duplication in London, but it will give some people the opportunity to compare and contrast, whatever one thinks of the work.
And staying with the BBC, does anyone else remember a series of programmes in (I think) 1980 when, on Tuesday evenings over 14 consecutive weeks(!), Radio 3 surveyed Busoni’s piano music? As a then twenty-something those programmes were a real experience for me, the memory of which has remained to this day. Can anyone imagine the BBC doing that sort of thing nowadays?
from Elias Canetti’s The tongue set free:
In spring 1917, 1 began the canton school on Rämistrasse. The daily walk to and fro became very important. At the start, right after crossing Ottikerstrasse, 1 always ran into the same gentleman strolling there, and the regular encounters lodged in my mind. He had a very lovely white head of hair, walked erect and absent-mindedly; he walked a short piece, halted, looked around for something, and changed his direction. He had a St. Bernard dog, which he often called to: «Dschoddo, come to Papa!» Sometimes the St. Bernard came, sometimes it ran further away; that was what Papa was looking for. But no sooner had he found it than he forgot it again and was as absent-minded as before. His appearance in this fairly ordinary street had something exotic about it, his frequent call made children laugh, but they didn’t laugh in his presence for he had something commanding respect as he peered straight ahead, tall and proud and not noticing anyone; they laughed only when they came home, telling about him, or when they played with each other in the street and he was gone. It was Busoni, who lived right there in a corner house; and his dog, as I found out only much later, was named Giotto. All the children in the neighborhood talked about him, but not as Busoni, for they knew nothing about him, they called him «Dschoddo-come-to-Papa!» They were on tranced with the St. Bernard, and even more with the fact that the handsome old gentleman referred to himself as the dog’s Papa.
….
She went to concerts often; music remained important for her, though she seldom touched the piano after Father’s death. Perhaps she had also become more demanding by having more opportunity to hear the masters of her instrument, some of whom were living in Zurich. She never missed a recital by Busoni, and it confused her a bit that he lived nearby. At first, she wouldn’t believe me when I told her about running into him, and only when she learned from others that it really was Busoni did she accept it, and she upbraided me for calling him «Dschoddo-come-to-Papa», like the neighborhood children, instead of «Busoni». She promised she would take me to hear him some day, but only on condition that 1 never again call him by that false name. She said he was the greatest keyboard master she had ever heard, and it was nonsense referring to all the others as «pianists» just like him.
Great stories.
there has been for some time a plaque marking where he lived with his mother as a child, in Trieste, Italy (then Austria) … appropriately on the plaza facing the Teatro G. Verdi.
There is also a copper plaque at the Berlin Charlottestrasse saying: ‘Here lived Mr Braun who endured Busoni’s piano concerto but recovered after two weeks’.
‘Not much is being done to mark his centenary, other than a BBC Proms performance by Ben Grosvenor and the LPO of his monumental piano concerto next month…’. Not much, true, but a bit more than you say. The Prom on 18th August will include a performance of his Comedy Overture.
‘He was not the most concise of composers…’??? Not guilty. Is that verdict based solely on the strength of the aforementioned magnificent Piano Concerto – probably the longest of his works apart from the operas? Could we accuse Beethoven likewise just on the strength of his 9th Symphony?
In defence, I would cite the sparkling Comedy Overture, lasting only 7 minutes. Then there’s the Tanzwalzer – an equally arresting blood brother of Ravel’s contemporaneous La Valse, taking 12 minutes. Furthermore there’s the suave Clarinet Concertino taking 12 minutes and the Divertimento for Flute and Orchestra clocking in at just under 9 minutes. Conciseness and wit lies at the heart of all of these works – and there’s the spooky and gripping Indian Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra at about 25 minutes. His music reflects Teutonic intellectual rigouressness and Italian drama and spontaneity.
The arch-conservative Hans Pfitzner lambasted Busoni as the epitome of rebarbative, impotent modernism – this after the premiere of The Rite of Spring! Hearing Busoni today, one finds it hard to imagine what all the fuss was about.
Busoni is one of the many composers whose works are rarely heard in the concert hall but very widely recorded.
I too would like to sit next to him at a dinner party; he was an erudite, towering intellectual – but if I were organising the event, just to keep the conversation going, I would like to seat Pfitzner opposite him!
If you want a composer to become popular, get his music in a movie.
It did very well for Strauss and Vivaldi and Pachelbel and Orff and even Ligeti.
Fun fact: The automated spelling correction suggestion for “Pachelbel” is “Bellyache”.
“…one of the early makers of the 220th century…”
Love it. Please don’t correct it.
the eternal life within enlightening resonances of the resurrection in memory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk-azZE0u-0
San Francisco Symphony featured his Piano Concerto in concerts on June 22 – 25, 2023.
https://www.sfcv.org/articles/music-news/sf-symphony-presents-worlds-only-75-minute-piano-concerto-chorus
Boston Symphony & the men of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus recorded the work in 2019 – read more here:
https://kirillgerstein.com/ventures/busoni/
His transcription of Bach’s Chaconne from the Partita no 3 in D Minor for solo violin is one of the most astonishing keyboard works — far greater than the sum of its parts — especially in the hands of a Michelangeli or Grimaud.
Of course HG is a very good pianist, but please – PLEASE – do not even suggest that her fine playing is anywhere close to being comparable to that of a true pianistic giant such as the great ABM whose recording of the Chaconne is one of the greatest immortalized achievements in performing of any piece on any instrument.
You’re right, ABM’s 1948(?) recording is legendary, and HG’s recording doesn’t quite reach those heights. But what I had in mind was a live performance (on YouTube) which is as electrifying as anything I’ve heard:
https://youtu.be/dOHiI_5yycU?si=z_nQM-zE6Ip4eBUp
The tedious Busoni Piano Concerto is 80 minutes of pure sonic flatulence. It’s pompous, over-blown, boring, and just plain silly.
Ferruccio Dante Michelangiolo Benvenuto Busoni — just his given name alone marked him immediately as a great artist. Mama Mia!
…so would you say the same for Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo de Suppé?
His edition of the forty-eight, available free online, is must have. He amazing scholarship highlights connection between themes and where Bach orchestrates similar themes in other works. It written in German, but providing you can read music notation, this will not be an insurmountable for the non-German speaker.
The Schirmer edition of book one is in English
Incredible that Bosuni’s ‘piano concerto’ is taken seriously nowadays by some people. It is a ‘pianist’s piece’ for showing-off the soloist’s prowes but musically it is merely pumped-up gestures of Brahms, Liszt, Wagner, uncooked and pretentious, and without any musical substance. How easily listeners can be cheated by hollow gestures.
The playing in the first video is sublime in all aspects.
He was also busy polemicising and produced his famous pamflet about progress in music: ‘Sketch of a new aesthetic of music’ in which he claimed that ‘music was born free and to win freedom is its destiny’, echoing Rousseau’s claim that man is born free but is enslaved by society. Both claims are wrong and merely show personal frustrations with the world.
His later music, when he had woken-up from the bad dream of his ‘piano concerto’, is characterized by elegance, clarity, and a cool intellectual surface. I tried to like his opera ‘Dr Faustus’ but the lack of energy and drive merely contributed to the stagnation of the plot. His other operas suffer from the same problems, in spite of truly good moments. I think he should have focussed on his piano playing and not venture in fields where he had his limitations.
What are the Italians doing to honor this man? great that the BBC is doing something though.
As far as I know, the BBC was set-up in 1947 in the wake of a Big Busoni Concert and that’s how they got the idea.
This may sound strange, but my PA has looked it up herself.
https://basiaconfuoco.com/2021/05/21/faust-van-busoni-wordt-het-geen-tijd-om-die-opera-weer-eens-op-de-planken-te-zetten/