BUSONI
Busoni the Visionary
Red Indian Diary (Book One): Seven Elegies: Chaconne
Jeni Slotchiver -
Piano
Centaur
CRC2438
Crotchet
Amazon
UK
This disc of music for piano by Busoni is well titled The Visionary, contaning
as it does the Seven Elegies of 1907 -
the first of which the composer entitled "Nach
der Wendung -
Recuiellernent" (After the Turning
-
Resolution), dated the same year in which
he published his Outline of a New Aesthetic. It is perhaps significant therefore
that this disc is the first of a series or recordings of Busoni's piano music
on which the present soloist is embarking.
Although Busoni himself averred "As a human being and an artist I prefer
to look forward rather than backward" there is also a hint of nostalgia in
the embodiment, in five of these strange pieces, of earlier material from
previous important compositions - the
Piano Concerto, Turandot, and Die Brautwahl. It is perhaps at the same time
janus-headed -
the third, the climax of the seven, was later
used as introduction to the Fantasia Contrapuntistica. They contain 'the
essence of myself' which he himself saw as the consummation ,at that point,
of those musical ideas and thoughts to which he gave shape in the 'New
Aesthetic'.
Coupled in this recording, significantly, is the Red Indian Diary
- four studies on Red Indian
motifs. It is often forgotten that Busoni held a professorship in Helsinki
for some ten years, and there is a northern influence in his music, of which
these four melodies are an example. Each reflects some visionary philosophy
with which individual tribes are identified
- one of the
most poignant being the song of the Bluebird
- a dance-song
of the Pima Indians, as simple unwarlike people. It is noticeable that the
inflexions of those melodies by which Busoni was so much affected can be
heard at several points in the Elegies which follow.
The philosophical depths of these pieces, played with a fine regard for clarity
and tempi by the American pianist jeni Slotchiver (here making her recording
debut) are plumbed in the penetrating programme notes which she herself has
written, and which augur well for future interpretations of this by no means
easy music.
The disc ends with a beautifully shaped performance of the majestic Chaconne
- which is the perfect summation
of the
Janus-aspect.
Colin
Scott-Sutherland
