Busoni's Toccata, K. 287, is a late work published in 1921, which often tends towards distillation and starkness, similar to Liszt's late music.
Interpretation
The album features a mix of romantically-filtered chorales and the monumental E-flat major Prelude, with Bach's Italian Concerto at its center.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Ferruccio Busoni, a pianist-composer, aimed to make Bach's works accessible to the modern musical world through his piano transcriptions.
Compositional Technique
Busoni's transcriptions of Bach's organ works for piano often included specific instructions, such as playing chords with all notes sounding simultaneously, to approximate an organ sound.
Interpretation
The album's performer, Francesco Piemontesi, chose to include Bach arrangements by 19th and 20th-century pianists, which he finds evoke a sense of nostalgia.
Composer Biography
Ferruccio Busoni, a pianist-composer, considered Bach to be the 'Alpha of piano composition and Liszt the Omega'.
Recording & Production
This album was recorded in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin, in December 2019, as a co-production with Deutschlandfunk Kultur.
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