Busoni was famously
contemptuous of the recording process
and his anguished letters on the subject
at the time are reprinted here ("tired…ill…unprepared!").
In total only four English Columbias
were published and all are collated
here along with very rare recordings
by Busoni’s greatest pupil, Egon Petri,
and by a much less well-known musician,
his English pupil Rosamond Ley who left
no commercial discs behind. Busoni’s
recorded pianism has occasioned considerable,
frequently negative, comment over the
years and has occasionally disconcerted
even his greatest admirers in its neutrality
towards the romantic repertoire. In
all Busoni bequeathed less than half
an hour’s recorded music making to posterity
– it’s known that he made discs of others
works, the hyphenated Mozart-Busoni
Andantino, Gounod-Liszt Faust Waltz,
Liszt’s Petrarch Sonnet, the Paganini-Liszt
Etude No 5, Valse Oubliée and
Weber’s Perpetuum Mobile, but these
were all rejected for publication.
The Bach C major Prelude
and Fugue from Book I of the Well Tempered
Clavier allows one to hear Busoni’s
extraordinary tonal beauty but along
with it some extreme rubati and unexpected
accelerandi and decrescendos. He subjects
the Prelude in particular to some real
metrical extension. The Bach-Busoni
Chorale Prelude sounds, indeed is, rushed
but it’s gloriously fluent and clearly
articulated nevertheless.
Coupled with this on
Columbia L1470 was the Ecossaise known
as the Scotch Step and as with its disc
mate it’s full of verve and wit. When
it comes to Chopin things are highly
personalised and problematic. The G
flat Etude is crisp and impressive but
the F sharp Nocturne makes little effect
other than one of blank neutrality.
The E minor Etude is rather mauled through
excessive rubato. In the main his Chopin
can be disappointing, mirroring perhaps
something of his own ambiguity about
the composer. His Liszt, the sole surviving
Liszt, is the Hungarian Rhapsody in
A minor and it’s a magnificent performance,
powerful and incisive, and one that
makes one regret anew the lack of those
unpublished Liszt sides.
Arbiter coupled their
recent release of the Busoni sides with
recordings of Busoni’s most distinguished
pupil, and assistant, Egon Petri. Naxos
adds Petri but also include Michael
von Zadora’s The Indian Diary Book
I played by Edward Weiss. Petri’s Chaconne
goes all guns blazing but his authentic
Busoni is beautifully nuanced and idiomatically
played. Von Zadora’s Sonatina discs
were made for Friends of Recorded Music
in 1938 (Nos. 3 and 5) and earlier for
Polydor (No.6 – the Carmen sonata) in
1929. His No.3 is really very quick.
It just so happens Petri recorded this
in 1938 as well – now on APR – and his
is pointedly slower, with far more colour.
In the riotous Carmen it’s again Petri
who bests Zadora in such matters as
the mobility in the Chorale left hand
and a greater sense of incision generally
even though the tempo is here almost
the same. Still Zadora’s discs are certainly
worth hearing in view of his Busonian
credentials. Weiss is maybe less so
– it’s always important to hear pupils
of Busoni but his Circle LP of the Indian
Diary is disappointing.
Since Arbiter and Naxos
both cover the Busoni discs comparison
is inevitable. There is a heavier veil
of shellac hiss on the Arbiter, which
broadly adheres more to the Pearl model
when it comes to noise suppression.
Lower frequencies, bass notes, are better
brought out by Naxos but there is more
air and brightness in Arbiter’s treble.
When it comes to middle frequencies
Naxos’s sound slightly more immediate.
I’d say that their noise suppression
has worked quite well but I can imagine
a transfer that gets to grips better
with the higher frequencies. Swings
and roundabouts – it will also depend
on couplings and on price and there
at least Naxos is impossible to beat.
Jonathan Woolf
see also review
by Christopher Howell
Edward Weiss
(piano) 
