#busoni

The Bach-Busoni Editions are a series of publications by the Italian Pianist and Composer Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) containing primarily piano transcriptions of keyboard music by Composer Johann Sebastian Bach. 

Happy Birthday, Ferruccio!

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OTD in Music History: Historically important composer, pedagogue, theorist, essayist, and concert pianist Ferruccio Busoni (1866 - 1924) dies in Berlin. From an early age, Busoni was an outstanding, if sometimes controversial, pianist. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory, and thereafter devoted himself to composing, teaching, and touring as a virtuoso concert pianist all across Europe and the United States. Busoni's academic and theoretical writings on music were highly influential in their day, and in them he covered not only aesthetic considerations but also explorations of microtonal harmony and other innovative technical topics. Busoni began composing early on (in a typical "late Romantic" style), but after 1907 -- when he published his "Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music" -- he developed a much more distinctive and progressive approach, which often flirted with atonality. His visits to America also led to a growing interest in North American indigenous tribal melodies, which was reflected in some of his later works. Although none of Busoni's original music has really remained in the core performance repertoire, it is a fascinating body of work which is well deserving of exploration by pianists who possess strong techniques. The "Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition" was founded in Busoni's honor in 1949, in order to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his death. It remains one of the most important international piano competitions in the world today. In addition -- and fittingly, given that today is also the anniversary of the death of J.S. Bach (1685 - 1750) -- Busoni's virtuoso piano transcriptions of Bach's works continue to hold the concert stage. PICTURED: At atmospheric cabinet photograph of the middle-aged Busoni, shown looking up from a score in his library and casting a penetrating stare into the camera, which he has signed and inscribed to a female admirer in Vienna in 1908. (That admirer, Berta Flatau nee Engel [1889 - 1943], would later tragically perish in a Nazi concentration camp in Poland.)

this is just gonna get weirder isn’t it

Orchester der Oper Zurich - P.Jordan,  Klaus Gruber

Elio: So you won't, maybe?

Bach-Busoni: Toccata, Adagio and Fugue BWV 564 (Kissin)