CHAN 10302 Booklet cover 3/10/05 10:26 AM Page 1 CHAN 10302 CHANDOS Indianische Fantasie Lustspiel-Ouvertüre Gesang vom Reigen der Geister Suite from ‘Die Brautwahl’ Nelson Goerner piano BBC Philharmonic Neeme Järvi CHAN 10302 BOOK.qxd 14/9/06 2:41 pm Page 2 Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) 1 Lustspiel-Ouvertüre, Op. 38 (1897, revised 1904) 6:28 for Orchestra Allegro molto – Vivacemente – Un poco misuratamente – Tranquillo – Tempo I 2 Indianische Fantasie, Op. 44 (1913–14)* 23:24 for Piano and Orchestra E. Burkard/Lebrecht & Music Arts Library Photo An Miss Natalie Curtis Andante con moto, quasi di marcia – Fantasia. Allegro – Adagio fantastico – Allegretto affettuoso, un poco agitato – Più mosso – Misurato – Cadenza. Fuggitivo, leggiero – Canzone. Un poco meno allegro – Andante quasi lento – Allegro sostenuto – Andantino maestoso – Sostenuto e forte – Cadenza – Lento – Finale. Più vivamente – Deciso – Animato – Allegrissimo 3 Gesang vom Reigen der Geister, Op. 47 (1915) 7:17 Indianisches Tagebuch, Book II (Elegie No. 4) An Charles Martin Loeffler Moderatamente scorrendo – Un poco vivacemente – Ritenendo – A tempo, e tranquillo Ferruccio Busoni 3 CHAN 10302 BOOK.qxd 14/9/06 2:41 pm Page 4 Busoni: Orchestral Works, Volume 2 Die Brautwahl, Op. 45 (1912) 27:19 Just after midnight on 11 July 1897, beautiful Albertine, daughter of a nouveau- Suite for Orchestra Ferruccio Busoni began writing his riche merchant, fall foul of an ages-old An Herrn Curt Sobernheim in herzlicher Freundschaft Lustspiel-Ouvertüre, Op. 38 (Comedy struggle between rival magicians. The 4 I Spukhaftes Stück. Allegretto moderato – Più vivo – Overture) – and had it finished by the beneficent but mysterious goldsmith- Al galoppo – Con fuoco – 3:16 morning. He himself conducted the first magician Leonhard gives aid to Albertine’s performance in Berlin that October, but beloved, the artist Edmund, and makes life 5 II Lyrisches Stück. Andante amoroso – Tranquillo – revised and shortened the score seven years difficult for the hapless bureaucrat Thusman, Lässig und schwärmerisch, ein wenig schleppend later. No specific comedy inspired the piece, preferred by Albertine’s father. Meanwhile (intensamente amoroso) – Più lento – Tempo I 6:34 which is a modern essay in the spirit of the black magician Manasse advances the 6 III Mystisches Stück. [ ] – Andante mistico – Andantino – Mozart’s comic-opera overtures. With its claims of his recently ennobled nephew, the Molto tranquillo – Andante – Poco più mosso – clear-cut themes and effervescent wit, it has ghastly Baron Bensch. Matters are eventually Tempo di valse lento 5:46 become one of his best-loved works. Despite settled through a trial of magical caskets, 7 IV Hebräisches Stück. Andante sostenuto in modo giudaïco – the ‘classical’ air, the overture’s wide range of somewhat in the manner of Shakespeare’s Un poco mosso – Schnell und wild – Tempo I – Adagio – 8:19 tonal modulation into remote keys is entirely The Merchant of Venice. 8 V Heiteres Stück. Allegro – Presto – Presto 3:19 modern, and the development includes a Busoni expended enormous pains on the TT 64:34 fugue whose wandering tonality brings it opera through 1906 –11 and it was briefly into realms of mock-sinister premiered in Hamburg in April 1912. Later Nelson Goerner piano* dissonance before all is resolved, as in all that year he completed the orchestral Suite, BBC Philharmonic good comedies, in a merry reinstatement of Op. 45, which was first performed on the status quo (in this case, C major). 3 January 1913 by the Berlin Philharmonic Fionnuala Hunt guest leader Busoni’s first opera, Die Brautwahl (The conducted by Oskar Fried. In creating a suite Neeme Järvi Bridal Choice), is a fantastic comedy based from his elaborate and orchestrally inventive on a story by E.T.A. Hoffmann. Set in opera Busoni did not simply extract a bourgeois Berlin society of the early 1800s, it sequence of set-pieces. Instead he assembled tells a complex story of love and magic in episodes that suggested a particular which competing suitors for the hand of the mood – ghostly or merry or whatever – and 4 5 CHAN 10302 BOOK.qxd 14/9/06 2:41 pm Page 6 wove those together to make a whole as the libretto hints, the immortal Wandering a people whose awareness of that ‘infinity’ concise piano concerto, laid out in three movement of that character, though the Jew. As well as gloomily patriarchal oriental seemed to him especially strong and linked movements, Fantasia – Canzone – various sections may come from diverse parts themes the movement includes the poignant. Many examples of their music had Finale. The melodic material is drawn from of the opera. Vocal lines were transferred to scintillating ‘Ballad of Lippold the moneyer’, been published by Busoni’s pupil Natalie the songs of several native American peoples, instruments, and the gorgeous tapestry of which Busoni later made the basis of his Curtis in The Indians’ Book (1907), one of notably the Hopi, Cheyenne, Laguna, Pima Busoni’s scoring can be appreciated for its Toccata for piano (1920), and it closes with the first volumes to present ‘Red Indians’ not and Pasamquoddy. Busoni found that they own sake. one of Manasse’s curses (he condemns as savages but as heirs to a centuries-old and resisted conventional development. He The opening ‘Spukhaftes Stück’ (Ghostly Albertine’s father to bankruptcy). The now vanishing spiritual culture. Busoni was eschewed the more typical repetitive songs Piece) uses three different, grotesque dance concluding ‘Heiteres Stück’ (Merry Piece) fascinated by the stark pentatonicism of the for those with more extended tunes, sequences motivated by Leonhard’s magic. combines the opera’s busy opening with a tunes, but even more by their spiritual aura, presenting these in elaborate and colourful Then the lambently glowing ‘Lyrisches Stück’ conjuring scene and the eventual happy their shamanistic expression of a tragic but pianistic and orchestral textures, with (Lyric Piece) concentrates on the opera’s love ending. animate universe. He was moved to strong intimations of the mystical style he music and scenes of romantic revelation, In his Sketch for a New Aesthetic of Music incorporate such tunes in his own works, had previously explored in works like notably the first duet during which Albertine (1906), one of the most prophetic volumes beginning with the Indianische Fantasie, Die Brautwahl. The opening Fantasia, with and Edmund fall in love, and whose refined ever written about the art, Busoni foresaw Op. 44 (Indian Fantasy) for piano and its insistent drumming rhythm and evocative ecstasy suggests that their attraction is more serialism, the replacement of the diatonic orchestra, which he composed between April orchestration, is largely based on Hopi spiritual than erotic. The ‘Mystisches Stück’ scale with an infinitude of modes, quarter- 1913 and February 1914. Busoni played the melodies. It seems to depict the vastness of (Mystical Piece) collects passages associated tones, third-tones, electronic music. Yet solo part in the world premiere, given in the endless prairie, with a party of Indian with Leonhard: from the music of the magic towards the end of his life he worked to Berlin in March 1914 with the Berlin warriors appearing in the distance and caskets it proceeds to an exquisite orchestral establish a ‘renewed classicality’ which would Philharmonic under the baton of Alexis sweeping past on horseback. The central version of the scene in which Leonhard blend all techniques, old and new, to Birnbaum. The following year he performed Canzone is built around two memorable shows Thusman a vision of Albertine in the recapture a Mozartian sense of lightness and it in Philadelphia with Leopold Stokowski; tunes: after an extended meditation on a window of a clock tower. Busoni also made a clarity. (The Lustspiel-Ouvertüre had been a Natalie Curtis was in the audience, and lyrical Pima song called ‘The Bluebird’, there piano version of this episode, one of his most significant early pointer in this direction.) If wrote: arises a broad, majestic dance-song of the characteristic pieces, which he published he had a guiding principle, it was ‘to express With the first bars of the orchestral Pasamquoddy, which Busoni said should be among his Elegien for piano under the title in well-defined form something of the introduction… I was in the West, filled again regarded as the ‘national anthem’ of the Red ‘Erscheinung’ (Apparition). infinity that surrounds human life’. with that awing sense of vastness, of solitude, Indian peoples. Towards the end of this The ‘Hebräisches Stück’ (Hebrew Piece) Doubtless this principle spurred his of immensity… movement there is a visionary episode partly by contrast reviews the music of the sinister interest, in the years just before World War I, Though rhapsodic in its succession of based on the work’s opening, which leads to (but impressive) Manasse – who is possibly, in the music of the Native American Indians, themes, this rarely heard work resembles a the Finale, an animated, strongly rhythmic 6 7 CHAN 10302 BOOK.qxd 14/9/06 2:41 pm Page 8 interplay between piano and orchestra on Pawnee song around which the work is Tortelier (Ulster Orchestra) and James Judd and Sir Edward Downes (Principal vigorous Hopi and Cheyenne themes. There woven is connected with the notorious (BBC National Orchestra of Wales), and Conductor 1980–91) is Conductor is no elaborate coda: instead the Indianische massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890: the made his debut at the BBC Proms in 2003 Emeritus. The BBC Philharmonic has Fantasie ends abruptly, as if the ghosts of the victims were members of a new Indian with the BBC Philharmonic under Vassily worked with many distinguished conductors Indians have vanished into the mists of time. religion whose prophet had taught his Sinaisky. In North America he has appeared and its policy of introducing new and Ghosts of a different kind inhabit Book II followers a holy dance to bring back the dead with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the adventurous repertoire into its programmes of Busoni’s Indianisches Tagebuch (Indian from the spirit world, so all Indians could be Montreal Symphony Orchestra.