Ferruccio Busoni and His Muses. Jiayan Sun (piano), Bridge 9610. Total Time: 70:01
DIGITAL REVIEW — When I think of Ferruccio Busoni, the city of Trieste comes to mind. Trieste is kind of a no-man’s-land, perched way off the northeastern edge of modern-day Italy, a place where the people speak Italian, the architecture is predominantly Austrian, and the landscape is distinctly Balkan. From certain hilltops in town, if you look south toward the coastline, you can see three countries: Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia. How appropriate it is that the seven-year-old Busoni gave his first concert as a pianist in none other than Trieste.
Like Trieste, Busoni was a one-off, an eclectic figure separate from the pack. He was an Italian who composed music rooted in Central Europe, whose principal influences were Germany’s Johann Sebastian Bach, Austria’s Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Hungary’s Franz Liszt. I can imagine Busoni looking out from a peak in the Italian Alps northward toward these countries while, at the same time, mapping out a futuristic vision of music in the 20th century. That is what Chinese-born pianist Jiayan Sun’s new album Ferruccio Busoni and His Muses is about — looking backward at the personalities who influenced him and forward at the progressive ideas that animated this singular, still under-appreciated composer.
The set starts off — naturally, it would seem — with Busoni’s edition of Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 903, as adapted for the modern grand piano, which Sun handles with a polished, rounded tone. Then comes Busoni’s own visionary Toccata, using Bachian contrapuntal techniques, Listzian-level virtuosity and chromaticism, and Busoni’s own extended harmonic innovations. Busoni’s Fantasia nach Johann Sebastian Bach juxtaposes arrangements of Bach organ chorales with his own material.
The Sonatina No. 6: Kammer-Fantasie über Bizet’s Carmen is clearly indebted to Liszt’s own paraphrases of found material. But Busoni has his own ideas on how to treat Bizet’s irresistible tunes: heavy on the chords, wisps of humor that look forward to Rodion Shchedrin’s Carmen ballet, and an unexpectedly downcast finish. Sun also demonstrates that Busoni’s imagination reached all the way to North America in Indianisches Tagebuch, Book I, a short suite of four pieces that deeply integrate Native American melodies he was studying within his brilliantly virtuosic writing.
To illustrate the Mozart connection, Sun throws in Liszt’s spectacular, if unfinished, Fantasie über Zwei Motive aus W. A. Mozart’s Die Hochzeit des Figaro, which Busoni completed while adding his own touches. It’s not made clear in this piece what influence Mozart had on Busoni’s style; Busoni just prepares the material Mozart and Liszt gave him so that future virtuosos could use it. That leads to a tiny encore, Busoni’s own elaborate take on the Serenade from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Variations-Studie nach Mozart I, from Klavierübung, Part 3 (which takes almost as long to say as the piece itself).
Sun clearly has the technical tools to handle whatever Busoni throws at him — and the music, with its weighty bass chords and octaves as played on a suitably über-grand instrument, is powerfully recorded. Piano buffs will savor this album.
