Victor Nicoara (piano)
Polyphonic Dreams
Contents listed after review
rec. 2023, Teldex Studio, Berlin
Hänssler Classic HC23046 [70]

I greatly enjoyed Victor Nicoara’s recital featuring Busoni’s six Sonatinas, with other works (review) and this one is even more rewarding. The centrepiece is his new version of the Fantasia Contrappuntistica, Busoni’s magnum opus for the piano, but first we have some smaller works.

The set of Seven short pieces for the cultivation of polyphonic playing was Busoni’s last piano cycle; it began as a set of five, to which two more were successively added. As with the Sonatinas, one should not think these practice material for amateurs: they are demanding studies requiring a polished technique. Having said that, they are also very attractive, and full of that haunting and mysterious atmosphere which makes the composer so fascinating. They are also mostly quiet. In the Preludietto a running theme is expounded first in the left hand, then the right, and then, combined with its own inversion, in both hands. After a quiet opening the second piece features the three-handed effect, in which the melody soars above a flowing accompaniment which requires both hands. In the third, a a melody in duple time is set against figuration in triple time with the hands frequently exchanging material, The fourth piece has a chorale-like theme set against triplets. It uses the threefold repetition of a single note, which was Busoni’s death motif; he had used it before and, the Busoni scholar Antony Beaumont tells us, intended to use it in the closing scene of his masterpiece, the opera Dr Faust. The fifth and sixth pieces together make up a Prelude and Fugue, the prelude being highly decorated while the Fugue is a transcription of the duet for Two Armed Men from Mozart’s Magic Flute, with his own ending. The final piece is a demonstration of the use of the third pedal which had been added to Steinway pianos. This allows a note or chord to be sustained while other parts can move freely over it; Busoni’s piece also uses both the normal sustaining pedal and the una corda pedal in a score written on four staves, so the player’s feet as well as his hands are kept occupied. However, though tricky to play, it is a gentle piece.

Next we have a jeu d’esprit, a miniature written by Benedict Mason for Victor Nicoara. Pastorale: a short piece for cultivating biodiversity takes off from Busoni’s last polyphonic study and also has allusions to other works in its span of just a minute. 

The Intermezzo which follows is an arrangement by Nicoara of the organ introduction to the scene in Dr Faust, set in a church, in which Faust and Mephisopheles encounter the Soldier, who is the brother of Gretchen, whom Faust has seduced and abandoned. As with Busoni’s own transcriptions of organ works this is a powerful piece which works well on the piano.

Nach Weill is Nicoara’s own composition which derives from Dr Faust by way of Kurt Weill’s first symphony which quotes it. Weill was a pupil of Busoni and this symphony long antedates his involvement with Brecht and cabaret-style numbers, at a time when he was concentrating on serious concert works. Curiously, it does not sound to me like either Busoni or Weill but like the Hindemith of Ludus Tonalis, a work which was then some twenty years in the future.

The Nocturne Canonique is by another Busoni specialist, the pianist and composer Larry Sitsky, and draws on the second of the polyphonic pieces and also on Busoni’s orchestral work, the Nocturne Symphonique, but in a more contemporary style. 

After all these short pieces, we come to the main work, the Fantasia Contrappuntistica in a new version. I need to explain. Busoni’s starting point was the last, unfinished fugue from Bach’s Art of Fugue. As it stands, this expounds and develops three subjects, none of which is the motto theme of the whole work. In 1880 Gustav Nottebohm, best remembered as the decipherer of Beethoven’s sketchbooks, demonstrated that these combine with the motto theme in a way which could not possibly be accidental. In 1910 Busoni was in Chicago, where his old friend, the composer and teacher Bernhard Ziehn, showed him the combination of the themes and also explained his own technique of new polyphony ‘in which melodic lines were combined in a strictly symmetrical way, without any prime regard for the resulting harmonies’ – I take this account from Beaumont.  Using this material and technique Busoni worked out his own completion of the fugue.

In the end he made four versions of this. The first, entitled Grosse Fuge and dated 1910, introduces Bach’s fugue, with cuts and numerous modifications, and adds an intermezzo, three variations, a cadenza, a fourth fugue which finally introduces the motto theme and the fourfold combination, and a final stretta which draws on other material from the Art of Fugue.  On returning to Europe, he added the third of his Elegies as a prelude. This was published in 1912 as the edizione definitiva, and this is what we usually hear. Unfortunately, Busoni cut a key passage and put it in an appendix, so it is usually omitted; John Ogdon was one of the few pianists to restore it.

However, Busoni returned to the work twice more. The edizione minore, also of 1912, adds new variations at the beginning but provides a simpler ending. Then there is the version for two pianos of 1922. This combines the opening variations from the two previous versions, makes further modifications throughout and improves the ending. However, Busoni also made additional cuts. 

Busoni told the pianist Egon Petri, who was his pupil, that he would like to make a new solo version of the work, incorporating the improvements subsequent to the edizione definitiva, but he did not live to do so. Larry Sitsky, in his book on Busoni’s piano music, set out how this could be done, and Nicoara has now done it, incorporating all the improvements but also opening the cuts, and this is the version he plays. I need to say that this is the version we have been waiting for. I do hope that Nicoara publishes it, as what I think of as his edizione espansiva deserves to become the standard version, and I hope other pianists adopt it

Finally, as an encore, we have what is listed as Busoni’s piano version of Bach’s Sinfonia No. 9, BWV 759. That reference is to the Chorale Prelude Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele, though, in an irony of fate, the original is no longer thought to be a work by Bach. Nor can I find this arrangement in any catalogue of Busoni’s works. Still, it is a beautiful piece. 

None of this would matter were Nicoara’s playing any less than fine. In fact he has a superlative technique, which makes light of the technical difficulties. His polyphonic playing is clear and limpid, he phrases beautifully and he never forces the tone: most of these pieces are quiet, though the Fantasia Contrappuntistica does have massive climaxes, which he does not shirk. The recording is also admirably clear, with the right degree of resonance, Nicoara also writes his own notes. 

I am sure Nicoara will give us more Busoni, but such is his clarity in polyphonic music that I would like to hear him tackle Bach’s Art of Fugue, ideally using the other important completion of the final fugue, that by Donald Tovey, who also made interesting suggestions for preludes for the fugues and his own completion of Bach’s scheme for the work. Be that as it may, this is a recording that will rejoice the hearts of all Busoni fans.

Stephen Barber

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Contents
Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924)
Seven short pieces for the cultivation of polyphonic playing  
Benedict Mason (b. 1954)
Pastorale: a short piece for cultivating biodiversity
Ferruccio Busoni
Intermezzo from Dr Faust (arr. Nicoara)
Victor Nicoara
Nach Weill
Larry Sitsky (b. 1934)
Nocturne canonique
Ferruccio Busoni
Fantasia Contrappuntistica (arr. Nicoara)
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) 
Sinfonia No. 9 BWV 759 (arr. Busoni)