Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus / Busoni, Ferruccio

All

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus / Busoni, Ferruccio

Concert Suite from the music of W. A. Mozart’s “Idomeneo”

SKU: 870 Category:

16,00 

W. A. Mozart /Ferruccio Busoni – Concert Suite from W. A. Mozart’s Idomeneo for full orchestra (1918)

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

Preface
“Yesterday I revised a pretty little work: the compilation and arrangement of a concert suite from Idomeneo.” Thus Ferruccio Busoni wrote to his wife on 13 August 1918. It was indeed a “pretty little work,” but being almost note-for-note pure Mozart, there was actually very little for him to do. The question for historians and Busoni scholars is: why did the great composer interrupt work on his unfinished magnum opus, the opera Doktor Faust (1910-1924), to complete an assignment that might just as easily have been accomplished by a junior subeditor in a music publishing house?

The answer is most likely to be found in the reception history of Idomeneo and in Busoni’s peculiar affinity to Mozart. In an age when late romanticism was celebrating its heyday in Europe, when the New German School of Wagner, Berlioz, and Liszt was in the ascendancy from Paris to Moscow and from Spain to Finland, Busoni swam against the current by extolling the virtues of Mozart over Beethoven, and Bach over all. A glance at his catalogue of works reveals a large number of Bach transcriptions for piano, some of which have permanently entered the repertoire, as well as such Bachian effusions as his Improvisation on the Bach Chorale “Wie wohl ist mir, o Freund der Seele” (1916) and, above all, the daunting Fantasia contrappuntistica for piano (1910) or two pianos (1921). But the Mozartean element in his music is no less pronounced: it was his admiration for Mozart’s operas led him to reject the Wagnerian through-composed model for his own Italianate stage works, from Arlecchino and Turandot (both 1917) to the unfinished Doktor Faust itself. …

 

 

Read preface / Vorwort > HERE

Score No.

Edition

Genre

Pages

Size

Printing

Go to Top