Tuesday 30 August 2016

Two Great Monuments in Music

Of all the extraordinary musical creations of the great Johann Sebastian Bach, none is more awe-inspiring or powerful (for me) than the incredible Ciaccona or "Chaconne" in D minor which concludes his second partita for solo violin without basso continuo (so specified by Bach himself).  The music is technically of the highest complexity, often requiring the player to fill in harmonies by bowing across all four strings.  Yet even without those chords, the violin's melodic line always clearly implies the bass line and harmonies underlying it -- which helps to explain why attempts to provide a bass part to go along with the violin have never really worked very well.

Many composers have tried to recast the Chaconne for various instruments, or combinations of instruments.  One of the most remarkable versions I've encountered is the piano transcription created in 1892 by the Italian-German composer and pianist, Ferrucio Busoni -- at the ripe old age of 26.  He actually wrote it while living and performing in the United States, in Boston.

Over the years, I've often listened to -- and been disappointed by -- transcriptions of other composers' works for the piano.  Many of my gentle readers have probably had to listen to one of my rants on the subject.  So why my immense admiration for this one?

The key difference from many of the transcriptions of Liszt and his followers is that Busoni has approached the original Chaconne with complete respect and even reverence.  Every single note that Bach wrote has been carefully preserved.  The transcription is not one beat longer or shorter than the original work for violin.  As well, the additional notes, chords, runs, and the like which Busoni uses are, at every step along the road, contained within the chords implied by the harmonic structure of Bach's original.  This is the polar opposite of virtuosity for its own sake.  Instead, Busoni seems to be trying to get right inside the master's thought process -- to imagine how Bach might have written the music if he'd been able to do so for a nineteenth century concert grand piano.

Equally significant is what is left out.  There are no superfluous flourishes, runs, arpeggios, show-off mannerisms, added cadenzas.  Busoni equally eschews gigantic, bass-heavy chords at the bottom and screaming, smashed-china fortissimos at the top of the keyboard.  Unlike some of Busoni's later Bach arrangements, this one resists the urge to rewrite the music, shortening or lengthening various passages in an attempt to "improve" it.  The result is a monumental achievement in its own right.

On the particular recording I have in my collection, it is partnered by an even huger monument of Busoni's own composing: the original version of his Variations and Fugue on Chopin's Prelude in C. Minor, Op. 22.  This work takes one of the simplest of Chopin's 24 Preludes, the C minor funeral march (# 20), and uses it to construct a series of 18 variations with a culminating fugue -- the entire work lasting for over half an hour.  It absolutely boggles my mind to listen to this incredible music and realize that Busoni wrote it while still a teenager (19 to be precise). 

(Years later, Busoni rewrote and drastically shortened the Variations.
He seemed anxious to curb and rein in his youthful excesses.  
The mature, shorter set lasts for less than ten minutes.)

The title page of the work makes plain that Busoni was working "in free form".  In other words, this is a thoroughgoing Romantic creation, not entirely harnessed to the classical models of strict variation form espoused by Brahms, although some parts of the piece do live in that world.  There are some strict variations, and others which develop more like a free fantasia.  Heavy, chordal writing alternates with glittering Italianate scherzando passages.  The variety and diversity of music across the entire chain of 18 variations is itself amazing.  Even more astounding is the realization that Busoni managed to develop this enormous musical kaleidoscope out of an original theme only 8 bars long!  The entire work culminates in a five-minute fugue in which the worlds of Busoni, Chopin and Bach all join hands at once.

Although several pianists have recorded the more concise mature form of the variations, beginning with the late John Ogdon, the CD I have at hand is probably still the only commercial recording of the original larger form of the work.  Beginning with the Bach Chaconne transcription, and ending with the complete Chopin Variations, it also contains several of Busoni's other piano works.  It's on the Naxos label, one of a series of albums of Busoni's piano music.  The music is all played by pianist Wolf Harden with immense authority and aplomb, and still available as a disc or download.