Ferruccio Busoni - Editions and Transcriptions

Editions and Transcriptions

Busoni edited and transcribed works by other composers, in particular those of Bach, Liszt, and Mozart.

The best known of these is his edition of the solo keyboard works of Bach, which he edited with the assistance of his students Egon Petri and Bruno Mugellini. He adds tempo markings, articulation and phrase markings, dynamics and metronome markings to the original Bach, as well as extensive performance suggestions. Their influence on the history of Bach performance should not be underestimated, as Chiara Bertoglio has pointed out. In the Goldberg Variations (BV B 35), for example, he suggests cutting eight of the variations for a "concert performance", as well as substantially rewriting many sections. The edition of the Goldberg Variations remains controversial, but has recently been reprinted. Its world premiere recording was by Sara Davis Buechner (aka David Buechner).

He created many other piano transcriptions of Bach works, including Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (BV B 29, no. 2) (originally for organ) and Chaconne (BV B 24) from the Partita No. 2 in D minor for solo violin, BWV 1004. Busoni became so well known as a transcriber of Bach's pieces, that the name "Bach-Busoni" was sometimes mistaken for his surname, and on one occasion his wife was introduced to someone as "Mrs. Bach-Busoni".

He edited three volumes of the 34-volume Franz Liszt Stiftung edition of Liszt's works, including most of the etudes. The Liszt edition was a scholarly endeavor and was faithful to the originals, but Busoni also prepared more freely adapted versions intended for concert performance, including transcriptions of the Paganini-Liszt etudes. The most famous of these is La Campanella (BV B 68), which has been championed by pianists such as Ignaz Friedman and Josef Lhévinne, and more recently by John Ogdon. Another famous transcription is his piano arrangement of Franz Liszt's organ work Fantasy and Fugue on the chorale "Ad nos, ad salutarem undam" (BV B 59).

On a smaller scale, Busoni edited works by Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Schoenberg and Schumann.

In the last seven years of his life Busoni worked sporadically on the Klavierübung, a compilation of exercises, transcriptions, and original compositions of his own, with which he hoped to pass on his accumulated knowledge of keyboard technique. It was issued in five parts between 1918 and 1922, and a second edition was published posthumously in 1925.

He had definite views on some composers. Franz Schubert he considered "a gifted amateur". He felt Beethoven did not have the technique to express his emotions. He ridiculed Robert Schumann's Carnaval. But he considered Felix Mendelssohn "a master of undisputed greatness" and "an heir of Mozart". He was planning to play some of Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words in a series of recitals in London in the year of his death.