Busoni's Elegies feature a new hierarchy of harmonic functions based on fresh treatment of chordal inversion, unconventional progressions, and constant simultaneity of major and minor modes.
Recording & Production
This recording was made in STUDIO GLANZING, Vienna, in December 2013, using a Bösendorfer Imperial piano.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Ferruccio Busoni, the composer, believed music should be "well meant and full of peace," but this did not prevent him from using provocative harmonic variety.
Performer Biography
Carlo Grante, the pianist on this album, gave the first live performance of all 53 of Leopold Godowsky's Studies on the Études of Chopin.
Compositional Technique
Busoni's "An die Jugend" is not for young or student performers, despite its title, but rather for the "young at heart," reflecting a "juvenile self-irony."
Composer's Artistic Vision
Busoni sought "absolute, distilled" music, expressing human sentiment but not human affairs, and always within artistic limits.
Composition History
The Elegies were originally conceived as five pieces, but Busoni expanded them to seven, adding a prelude and a conclusion, "Berceuse."
