Notices of Busoni Recitals.
The following press notices relate to
Ferruccio Busoni's recent Chicago and Columbus recitals:
Busoni is one of the big fellow. The moment he steps onto the stage you feel yourself in the presence of a personality, and as he sits at the piano it is as a master. Busoni, in a way, is the pianist's pianist. He is fascinating to the man who has analyzed the music, studied over every detail of the meaning, every problem of the playing and knows thoroughly from the musician's point of view what there is in it. You cannot escape from the mentality of the man. You know that he knows just what he is to do and why he is doing it.
The manner in which he delivers a melody is individual in the last degree. For instance, in the "Erl King" he evidently does not intend to sing the song. He approaches it from an altogether different side, bringing out the storm, painting a scene as Poe might have thought it, while the song he gives in an abrupt arbitrarily accented declamation, more like the way in which Henry Irving used to read his lines than anything else we can think of. There is one thing you may rest assured of when you hear Busoni; he will be unlike any other man. He is the complete development of an individual of the keenest artistic sensibilities and marvelous technical skill.
As a player of the instrument his powers are simply beyond words. He tosses off difficulties, over which the good men have to fast and pray, as though they were the merest trifles, and to listen to him is a joy. There are no hard places. When the notes pile up thicker and thicker in the score it is like the river when it comes to the rapids, just more fun. But there is never anything that seems done for display; simply the thing was so written and must be so played to get at the meaning. His natural bent is toward the giants, Bach and Beethoven, and that very important man whose place in the temple is not yet settled, Liszt, and yet his rendering of the Brahms-Paganini variations was one of the greatest pieces of piano playing Chicago ever heard.
He is the leader of the newest school to whome the piano is a small orchestra, and the volume of tone and the variety of color he can draw from his instrument are wonderful. In short, he is a masterful man who plays as it is given him to understand, with fear of nothing and only one thought, to express what the music has meant to him. While some of the things he does are unexpected, they are the utterances of a thinker who is a musician and a pianist before whom all bow in admiration. - Chicago Evening Post, March 28, 1910.
Doubtless it was a fortunate coincidence rather than the result of a managerial sense of the fitness of things which caused our recital season to close with a program by Ferruccio Busoni yesterday afternoon in Orchestra Hall. Managerial plans are rarely concerned with purely artistic considerations, and it was only a happy accident that permitted a season exceptionally rich in events of importance to end in such a splendid climax as this recital proved to be.
Mr. Busoni commands the services of a double quintet. Indeed, this is no exaggeration, for he is the master of so many different tone colors and dynamic levels which he sustains at will that one cannot excape the conviction that each of his ten fingers has a voice of his own. This capacity to subdivide the homogeneous tone of the piano into many contrasted qualities and quantities, maintained simultaneously, imparts to Busoni's playing a polyphonic character that unites with his highly intellectual and objective style to include in his interpretative art all of nobility and purest beauty.
Admitting these qualities, it is not too much to say that Mr. Busoni set for us new interpretive standards in the "Waldstein" sonata of Beethoven, the Brahms-Paganini variations, the Chopin B minor sonata, Liszt's transcription of the "Erlking," and his concert etude, "At the Spring," and Busoni's own edition of the sixth Hungarian rhapsodie. If his presentations of so many of these compositions sounded strange to our ears, this was due, perhaps, to two reasons. Busoni's polyphonic treatment of the piano makes it sound like another instrument, and his technical mastery is such that passages which, because of their difficulty, have been emphasized by other great pianists are played by him with such ease that the proportions of the composition are readjusted.
That this readjustment effected a significant musical emphasis in every instance may be proved by a few citations from the program. The last movement of the "Waldstein" sonata contains a scale passage that has become famed for its difficultness. The well-informed listener waits for it anxiously as does also the performer, and both are relieved when it is past. One waited for Busoni also to play it, but when it came it was given with such lightness and melodic value that one forgets to mark it. The contour of the movement was undisturbed.
Again in the last movement of the Chopin sonata many hearings have taught us to expect a brillianst display of finger technic in a somewhat similar scale passage. Busoni subdues it to bring out the melody which the left hand presents. Or in the first movement of the "Waldstein" we are accustomed to a constant solo by the upper voice in the second theme. Busoni revealed its polyphonic and gave to it new color and new meaning. One might cite many other examples, but such technical details grow tiresome. They are mentioned only to show how Busoni is different from other pianists.
The great moment at the recital came in the variations. In all else Busoni played with that emphasis of intellectual aspect, that restraint, which is so frequently mistaken by the sentimentalists for coldness. But he could not quite contain his enthusiasm in the Brahms number, and one received an impression, which will long endure, of a genius in a moment of inspired re-creation.
The pianist was in a generous mood and repaid the enthusiasm of his hearers by granting numerous encores. After the Brahms-Paganini variations he gave the Liszt treatment of the same theme. After the Chopin sonata, two of that master's etudes, the G flat major and G sharp minor from op. 25, and after the Liszt group the "Campanella." - Chicago Tribune, March 28, 1910.
I do not recall ever hearing a pianist who puts so much individuality into what he plays as does Busoni. His performance of the Beethoven sonata has great dignity and clarity. Mr. Busoni is a most intellectual player and gets into innermost depths of the music. His Chopin playing was ideal and his beautiful tone is especially adapted to this style of music. Mr. Busoni substituted an impromptu in place of the barcarolle. He took a very deliberate tempo in the nocturne and he played it with the loveliest of singing tones. The player gave a tremendously effective rendition of the polonaise in A flat (Chopin). He achieved one of the most astounding crescendos in the piece I have ever heard performed on the piano. There seemed to be no limit to the amount of tone which Busoni drew from hi instrument. In response to an enthusiastic outburst of applause he gave a Chopin etude (Butterfly) for an extra number. He closed his program with the Liszt transcription of themes from Gounod's "Faust" and the same composer's transcription of Paganini's "Campanella." At the close of the program he gave as an extra number one of the familiar Liszt Hungarian rhapsodies. Throughout the evening Mr. Busoni exhibited the many fine qualities that have made him famous. He technic is almost impeccable, and from the piano he gets one of the most beautiful tones imaginable. - Columbus Journal, March 27, 1910.
