Busoni, Ferruccio

Ferruccio Busoni – Orchestral Suite from the music to Gozzi’s fairytale drama Turandot op. 41

(Kindermann Verzeichnis 248)

(b. Empoli, 1 April 1866 – d. Berlin, 27 July 1924)

I. Die Hinrichtung. Das Stadttor. Der Abschied aus der Musik zum ersten Akt (Alla Marcia. Allegro)
II. Truffaldino (Introduzione e marcia grotesca)
III. Altoum. Marsch
IV. Turandot. Marsch
V. Das Frauengemach. Einleitung zum III. Akt
VI. Tanz und Gesang
VII. Nächtlicher Walzer aus der Musik zum vierten Akt
VIII. In modo di Marcia funebre e finale alla turca aus der Musik zum fünften Akt

Ferruccio Busoni’s compositional oeuvre mainly comprises piano works and chamber music, but also four operas, several orchestral suites and numerous arrangements as well as instructive and revised editions of works by important composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Liszt. The time from 1900 onwards, when Busoni lived in Berlin until the end of his life (apart from his wartime stay in exile in Switzerland (1915-20)), is a special period of composition within his career.

In his later creative life Busoni developed his own ideal of sound, which made itself recognisable in his orchestral works and operas through sophisticated instrumentation and a voluminous sound apparatus. Important works were written, such as the operas Die Brautwahl (1912), Arlecchino and Turandot (1917), Doktor Faust (1916-1924), the Nocturne symphonique (1912), the Piano Concerto (1904), the Indian Fantasy (1913/14) and the Fantasia contrappuntistica (1910). Although Busoni opposed program music as a formal genre, he also composed some orchestral works that refer to literary or pictorial ideas, such as the Symphonische Tongedicht (1893), the Berceuse élégiaque. Des Mannes Wiegenlied am Sarge seiner Mutter (1909) and the Rondò arlecchinesco (1915).

Between 1904 and 1917/18, Busoni composed several works based on the “Turandot” material. A major work is the Suite for orchestra op. 41 (1904/1905); another one is the opera Turandot, written in 1917 and based on the Suite. The work was premiered in the same year together with the one-act opera Arlecchino under the title La nuova Commmedia dell’arte. …

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