“Piano Concerto (Busoni)”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

The Piano Concerto in C major, Op. 39 {{nobreak|(BV 247),}} by Ferruccio Busoni, is one of the largest works ever written in this genre. The concerto lasts around 70 minutes and is in five movements; in the final movement a male chorus sings words from the final scene of the verse drama Aladdin by Adam Oehlenschläger, who also wrote the words of one of the Danish national anthems.^[1]

The first performance of the concerto took place in the Beethoven-Saal, Berlin, Germany, on November 10, 1904, at one of Busoni's own concerts of modern music. Busoni was the soloist, with Karl Muck conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Choir of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche).{{sfn|Beaumont|1985|p=61}} The reviews were decidedly mixed, some being filled with outright hostility or derision.{{sfn|Dent|1974|p=135}} The century following its premiere has seen relatively few performances, owing to the large orchestration, complex musical texture, the use of a male chorus, and the staggering demands put on the soloist.

It seems to have been Beethoven who first included a chorus in a concerted work with piano and orchestra, in his Choral Fantasy, Op. 80, of 1808;^[2] since then only a handful of works have been scored for similar forces, including Daniel Steibelt's Piano Concerto No. 8 (first performed March 16, 1820, in Saint Petersburg)^[3]^[4] and the Piano Concerto No. 6, Op. 192 (1858) by Henri Herz^[5] which also have a choral finale.

Busoni intended to dedicate the concerto to his friend William Dayas, but he died in 1903.^[6] His daughter Karin Dayas gave the first American performance of the concerto in 1932.

Movements

Although the five movements are laid out separately in the score, Busoni stated that the concerto should be played as a continuous whole, without breaks.{{sfn|Dent|1974|p=142}}

The first movement, marked "Prologo e introito" is a little over fifteen minutes long on average, and is a broad Allegro movement which features a clangorous piano part.

The second movement, a kind of Scherzo, is mostly a light-fingered affair for the piano that makes use of "Italianate" rhythms and melodic material, even if the melodies are more evocative of Italian popular music than actual quotations from indigenous Italian folk music.

The third and longest movement is the "Pezzo serioso", a massive meditation and exploration in four parts in the key of D flat major which has a central climax that is once again pianistically challenging and brilliantly scored for both the piano and the orchestra.

The fourth movement "All' Italiana", is perhaps the most variegated in its use of the orchestra, with a terrifically virtuosic piano part, arguably more difficult than anything that has come before it in the work. There are also two cadenzas to this movement – one, included in the printed score; the other, an insert in the two-piano score that is an amplification of the one printed in the two-piano edition.

The final movement, "Cantico" with male chorus, brings full circle many themes that have been heard earlier in the work. The words sung by the chorus are from the final scene of Oehlenschläger's verse drama Aladdin.

Instrumentation

The concerto is scored for a large orchestra.{{sfn|Busoni|1906|pp=1, 65, 106, 187, 286, 294}}{{sfn|Kindermann|1980|p=225}}{{sfn|Roberge|1991|p=32}}{{sfn|Beaumont|1985|p=61}} (For the instrumentation in Italian see below.)

Problems of performance

Apart from the immense demands required of the soloist and the large forces needed, there is a further difficulty that can affect performances of this work: the role of the soloist.

As Busoni himself wrote, piano concertos tended to be modelled after either Mozart or Beethoven.{{sfn|Dent|1974|p=143}} In Mozart's case, the concerto centres around the spotlit virtuoso composer-performer, who appears to spontaneously create the work before us, on-stage. The orchestra mostly provides a background accompaniment. But with Beethoven, the work is often conceived in symphonic terms; the piano takes the secondary role, reflecting on or responding to ideas that have already been introduced by the orchestra (excepting the fourth piano concerto).{{sfn|Dent|1974|pp=143–4}}

Busoni combined both these precedents in the Piano Concerto, Op. 39, creating a huge work of symphonic proportions which was originally accused of having only a piano obbligato.{{sfn|Dent|1974|p=143}} The work presents exceptional challenges for the soloist, who is often nevertheless required to incorporate a glittering cascade of notes into the overall orchestral sound. This self-abasement of the familiar 19th-century heroic soloist's role thus requires careful consideration of balance in performance. But as music writer Edward Dent comments:

Busoni and Aladdin

. Kajanus, the director of the Helsinki Conservatory and conductor of the fledgling Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, composed Aino, a symphonic poem for male chorus and orchestra in 1885. Kajanus also taught Jean Sibelius at the Conservatory, where Busoni, aged 22, was also on the teaching staff in 1888; during that year he wrote the Concert-Fantasie for piano and orchestra (BV230, Op. 29).{{sfn|Wis|1977|pp=262}} According to Erik Tawaststjerna, "The time Sibelius spent with Busoni and the interchange of ideas contributed in no small measure to his development and in all probability to his artistic breakthrough in spring 1889.".{{sfn|Tawaststjerna|1976|p=45}} Sibelius's Kullervo for orchestra, men's chorus, and baritone & mezzo-soprano soloists was first performed in Helsinki in 1892.{{sfn|Di Grazia|2013|p=377}}^[19]

Manuscript and publication details

Performances

In addition to the above list of recordings, the concerto has also received concert performances in recent years by (among others, in alphabetical order): Giovanni Bellucci;^[21] Karin Dayas, Christopher Falzone; Carlo Grante; Randall Hodgkinson; Martin Jones; Piers Lane; Janos Solyom ;

YouTube links (in alphabetical order): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nKyDBpGzL0&list=UUXSPTiD2CgnyLlCAPoP1J5Q&index=66 Volker Banfield];

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?action_edit=1&list=PL565A5CB81B3BB7C4 Christopher Falzone] (with OSO and transcription for solo piano_complete);

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rFV_g6T5lM&playnext=1&list=PL7D6B30AC150E063D&feature=results_main Marc-André Hamelin]; (originally telecast on March 31, 2001 on the Finnish commercial television station MTV3; 4th movement only appears on It's All About the Music Hyperion DVDA68000);

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25Py5z00-7c&playnext=1&list=PLD9C27472965D7283&feature=results_main John Ogdon];

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFPoRmYPpz0&playnext=1&list=PLBECE900C56574B66&feature=results_main Garrick Ohlsson];

A performance of the concerto by Pietro Scarpini with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus was broadcast on New York's WQXR on July 10, 1966.^[22] They had previously performed the concerto in Carnegie Hall, New York, on February 7, 1966.^[23]

The amateur pianist, industrialist, and philanthropist Sir Ernest Hall (a contemporary of John Ogdon at the Royal Manchester College of Music) performed the concerto in 2000 with the Sheffield Symphony Orchestra and the Halifax Choral Society conducted by John Longstaff. A recording is available through the SSO website.^[24]

Downloadable scores

References

1. ^[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSwV-DJivQU Der er et yndigt land].
2. ^Coincidentally, the same year in which Oehlenschläger published the German edition of Aladdin.
3. ^{{harvnb|Schonberg|1963|p=75}}. Schonberg reserves his greatest ire for Steibelt as a purveyor of "obvious fakery [...] a charlatan with perhaps a touch of genius." {{harv|Schonberg|1963|pp=74, 72}}
4. ^According to Simon Keefe, the finale of Steibelt's unpublished 8th concerto is a "Bacchanalian Rondo" for accompanied chorus. {{harv|Keefe|2005|pp=99–100}}
5. ^Henri Herz: List of Herz's works at Gottschalk.fr. (In French). Retrieved 2 May 2015.
6. ^Deaville, James: “Dayas, William Humphreys.” Oxford Music Online. (Link requires subscription.)
7. ^Capable of descending to "16-foot" C, three octaves below middle C. {{harv|Kindermann|1980|p=225}}. See also double basses#Tuning.
8. ^The three additional percussion players are required simultaneously in the "All' Italiana" (4th) movement at the point in the score marked "Tumultuoso." {{harv|Busoni|1906|p=222}}
9. ^s to {{sfn}}s -->Adam Oehlenschläger's verse drama Aladdin, or the Magic Lamp was first published in Danish in 1805.{{sfn|Oehlenschläger|1805|p=}}The play has a number of parallels with the works and ideas of Goethe, such as the Faust-figure of the wicked magician Noureddin who takes advantage of Aladdin's youth and inexperience to get hold of the wonderful lamp;{{harvnb|Celestini|2008|p=281}}. Oehlenschläger seems to have been drawing on an early draft of the Faust legend, Faust – Ein Fragment (Leipzig 1790); see {{harvnb|Abels|2000|p=343}}, cited in {{harvnb|Celestini|2008|p=281n}}
10. ^"Oehlenschlager zahlte mehrere Monate lang zum engsten Kreis Goethes und nutzte die Gelegenheit, ihm bei den taglichen Besuchen seinen Aladdin aus dem Danischen frei ubersetzend vorzulesen." {{harv|Celestini|2008|p=281}}
11. ^In a letter to Egon Petri (dated Amsterdam, October 6, 1906) Busoni mentions having completed the text for the first act of his stage adaptation of Oehlenschläger's play Aladdin. {{harv|Beaumont|1987|pp=79–80}}. The complete text remains unpublished.
12. ^Compare {{harvnb|Oehlenschläger|1808|pp=560–1, 564}} to {{harvnb|Busoni|1906|pp=294–324}}
13. ^"Il Coro nel Concerto dovrebbe del resto rimanere invisible, ed aggiungere un nuovo registro alle sonorità che lo precedono." {{harv|Dent|1974|pp=148–9}}.
14. ^The purpose of the Urphänomen is to provide an authentic conception of a whole complex process. {{harv|Blunden|n.d.|}} According to Andy Blunden, this was fundamental to Goethe's scientific work. In his Italian Journey, Goethe described his studies of variations in plants, making botanical sketches of them and sensuously familiarising himself with all the variations of what he took to be the same basic archetype. All plants, he believed, were a realization according to conditions, of an underlying form which he called the Urpflanze or primordial plant. {{harv|Blunden|n.d.|}}
15. ^Das Glück
16. ^"Schiller hat in einem Gedicht mit dem er Goethe huldigt, das Glück gepriesen als eine Gabe der Götter, in Geschenk ohne Verdienst und Leistung. Dieser Lobpreis galt dem, was Schiller am anderen bewunderte, selbst aber nicht besaß." {{harv|Schmitz|1974|p=67}}
17. ^"Für Oehlenschläger blieb das Glück seit dem Aladdin ein Zeichen der Erwählung auch seiner selbst, fast ein Urphänomen der Dichtung, wie es für Schiller der Kampf war, oder für Goethe das Dämonische." {{harv|Schmitz|1974|p=67}}
18. ^The English translation of the Oehlenschläger text was aided by reference to Betteridge, The New Cassell's German Dictionary.
19. ^{{cite web |title=Studies, and the composition of Kullervo, 1885–92 |website=Jean Sibelius |url=http://www.sibelius.fi/english/erikoisaiheet/asunnot/asunt_03.htm |accessdate=15 March 2016}}
20. ^This was Revenaugh's sole recording as a conductor.
21. ^http://www.nationaltheater-mannheim.de/de/oper/stueck_details.php?SID=203
22. ^[https://www.nytimes.com/1966/07/10/archives/this-weeks-radio-concerts.html?sq=scarpini%2520szell%2520busoni&scp=3&st=cse "This Week's Radio Broadcasts," New York Times, July 10, 1966.] Accessed 10 September 2009. Registration and purchase required.
23. ^Harold C. Schonberg, [https://www.nytimes.com/1966/02/08/archives/music-busoni-revisited-giant-concerto-played-by-the-clevelanders.html?sq=Szell%2520scarpini&scp=1&st=cse "Music: Busoni Revisited. Giant Concerto Played by the Clevelanders," New York Times, February 8, 1966.] Accessed 10 September 2009. Registration and purchase required.
24. ^SSO website. Accessed 11 September 2009.