Matériel : Partition
Par BUSONI FERRUCCIO. / Répertoire / Piano
SKU: BR.EB-9433
ISBN 9790004189108. 9 x 12 inches. German.
Text by the composerTranslation: engl. (E. J. Dent), ital. (V. Levi), port. (G. de Medeiros)Place and time: Bergamo, around the 18th century.Characters: Ser Matteo del Sarto, master tailor (baritone) - Abbate Cospicuo (baritone) - Dottore Bombasto (bass) - Leandro, Cavaliere (tenor) - Arlecchino (speaking part) - Colombina, Arlecchino's wife (mezzo-soprano) - Annunziata, Matteo's wife - Zwei Sbirren - Ein Karrner - a Donkey - People at the windows (silent parts)The idea behind this work was to combine a major speaking role with a part for a female singer and orchestra in the spirit of the opera buffa. The overall tone is pacifistic and anti-bourgeois. Busoni's inspiration was that of an opera-play in the style of Italian improvised comedy; he wanted types and characters on stage whose varying typology would provide the source of conflict ... The title hero absconds with the young wife of the Dante-reading tailor Matteo. He returns as a false barbarian commander, as a husband who engages in a duel with the suitor Count Leandro, and as a conqueror who announces the moral of the story in the epilogue: how to be able to bow in rags and still retain one's dignity and rights. The piece takes a turn for the absurd when the Abbate, at the sight of Leandro, who is presumed dead, begins to sing a chorale-like song of praise to the donkey of Providence who comes trotting in at that moment. This introduces the most musically refined number in the piece, the quartet, in which Leandro's love aria and his duet with Columbina satirize the attitudes prevalent in Italian opera from Scarlatti to Verdi. Musically, Busoni uses throughout the entire work an idiom of dance-like, blissfully transparent comedy and hides harmonic audacities behind touches of lightness. The orchestral sound radiates an incomparable brightness and buoyant elegance. (Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, 1967)In the appendix, EB 9433 contains the later composed aria Wer siegt? Wer fallt?..
SKU: GH.GE-11464
ISBN 979-0-070-11464-6. A4 inches.
Work note by the composer: When I received the news of this commission, I had no idea what it would lead to. Writing for guitar solo is not the same as composing for orchestra where you have forty voices where you can easily mask an entire section. Here you are very naked to the bone. The starting point for this work was from J.S. Bach's Chaconne in D-minor that Johannes had performed in concert, originally written for violin but there is a version transcribed for guitar and piano made by Ferruccio Busoni. When I went to Cortona (in Tuscany, Italy) completed the southern mentality of this work. Arpalineais actually a merged word in Italian language. Arpa means harp, however in a musical context it's more or less resembled with the word arpeggio, which means broken chords. Lineameans line. The work is divided in three parts. I. Arpeggio: It starts with an opening chaconne-like sequence and is marked with a certain depth in which the chords starts to separate from the organum note in the bass and it culminates into a section called with rhythmical focus. These sections alternates, variates which each other. The middle section has a playful and childish atmosphere where the guitarist knocks on the body of the guitar resembling a Spanish folk instrument cajon. This is leading to a section which tends more to a very aggressive fusion-like riff that loses control and reaches its climax at the end. II. Linea: The static rhytmical pulse is now disintegrated and it forms more or less sort of a free, improvisational state in a rubatolike tempo. The character is described as a very hot day with temperatures rising above 37! C (or 100! F) where you can hardly do anything just sitting dozed off and pespiring because of the extreme heat watching a huge fog coming up in the evening that spreads around the Tuscan atmosphere. III. Finale: It starts off with fast one-note ostinati then more and more notes pop up like a gradual rain storm with thunder strikes! And eventually it leads to that is a large flood through the streets of an medieval Southern town. The work ends with a short circuit slapped strings along with extremely fast tremolos that reaches higher and louder as possible! Benjamin Staern
SKU: BR.EB-9429
ISBN 9790004189061. 0 x 0 inches. German / Italian.
Text by the composer based on a drama by Carlo GozziTranslation: engl. (L. Salter), ital. (O. Previtali)Place: Im aussersten Orient. Vor dem Stadttor Pekings, Thronsaal im Kaiserpalast, das Frauengemach TurandotsCharacters: Altoum, Kaiser (bass) - Turandot, seine Tochter (soprano) - Adelma, ihre Vertraute (mezzo-soprano) - Kalaf, Sohn des Timur, ein Prinz (tenor) - Barak, sein Getreuer (baritone) - Die Koniginmutter von Samarkand, eine Mohrin (soprano) - Truffaldino, Haupt der Eunuchen (tenor) - Pantalone, Minister (bass) - Tartaglia, Minister (bass) - Acht Doktoren (4 tenors, 4 basses) - Eine Vorsangerin (mezzo-soprano) - Der Scharfrichter (stumme Rolle)Busoni's work, which antedates Puccini's famous setting by a few years, seems rather cool in com-parison to the later piece. Busoni tones down the colors of his orientalisms and totally eschews sentimental lyricism. His strengths lie especially in the scintillating, unfathomable characters and in a music that hovers in an ambivalent manner between brightness and darkness, sadness and humor, danger and harmlessness. This work of art makes its references clear: Gozzi's play about the murderous princess is peopled with familiar commedia dell'arte figures, and one is not quite sure whether this mixture of fun and danger gives a more relaxed feeling to the activity on the stage or whether it does not do precisely the opposite, adding the irreconcilable perspective of a gondola trip on the edge of a bottomless gulf. Busoni is more faithful to Gozzi than Puccini and thus to the gracious levity that hovers over the excesses of the action. His mild chinoiseries repeatedly lead to a Neo-Classicism inspired by Venetian folklore. (Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich, 1985) Turandot was premiered with Arlecchino in Zurich on 11 May 1917.
