Alfred Brendel, one of the most notable pianists of the second half of the 20th century, made four LPs for the American label SPA at the start of his career in the early 1950s.
Recording & Production
SPA Records (The Society of Participating Artists Inc.) was a short-lived American label established in 1951 by conductor F. Charles Adler and Norman Fox, ceasing recordings by 1956.
Composition History
Busoni's Fantasia Contrappuntistica, the largest of his piano works, was composed in 1910 and attempts to complete the unfinished final fugue of Bach's Kunst der Fuge in a modern idiom.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Busoni, a diverse artist, was a pianist, composer, teacher, writer, editor, transcriber, aesthete, and avid collector of books and art.
Composer Biography
Busoni taught piano students, sometimes without remuneration, and his composition students included Kurt Weill, Vladimir Vogel, and Philipp Jarnach.
Recording & Production
The arrival of the LP in 1948 and the tape-recorder, a German wartime development, made recording new music easier and more commercially attractive in the post-war period.
Historical Context
Post-war impoverishment in Europe led many young musicians to make recordings very cheaply, turning Vienna into a new recording hub for American labels like Vox and Westminster.
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