Word: busoni
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...were dimmed, and Vorsetzer, the 700-Ib. pianist, stood at the keyboard of the Steinway concert grand, all 88 fingers poised over the keys. Then the mechanical wizard began to play - first a spirited Josef Hofmann performance of Mendelssohn's Rondo Capriccioso, then further seances with Leschetizky, Paderewski, Busoni, Mahler, Saint-Saens, Debussy, Ravel. Guided by electric impulses from a collection of unique piano rolls, Vorsetzer's sensitive fingers produced all the notes with ghostly perfection, just as the turn-of-the-century masters had played them 50 years be fore. But this time, tape recorders took...
...Busoni: Fantasia Contrappuntistica (Egon Petri; Westminster, mono). In this stylistic tour de force, Italian Pianist-Composer Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) started with a chorale prelude and then, using subjects from an unfinished fugue by Bach, spun out four three-part fugues, one of them built on the name and the four notes B-A-C-H.* Throughout, Busoni gradually modernized his musical vocabulary, ending with a style marked by thick, dissonant clusters of notes. The effect, as presented by Dutch Pianist Petri, is a little like watching a nature film in which plants miraculously blossom and grow before the viewer...
Fischer-Dieskau is also one of the most consistently popular opera singers in Germany; aided by an imposing 6-ft. 2-in. figure, he has shaped a number of moving characterizations, e.g., Wolfram in Tannhäuser. Sir John Falstaff, and the title role in Busoni's Doktor Faustus. Even more surprising than the scope of his success is the fact that he had no early singing experience: he took his first voice lesson when he was 16, had scarcely started to sing professionally when he was drafted into the German army. As an American prisoner...
Audience Participation. In Chicago, as Busoni's Sonata No. 2 reached the last groove and began to swish round and round unattended, anxious listeners (to highbrow radio station WFMT) called the studio, got no answer, notified the police, who rushed to the studio, found Disk Jockey Omar Shapli, 27, bent over a desk, sound asleep...
Among the musical versions of the Faust legend (including the operas of Gounod, Boito, and Busoni), Berlioz' Damnation of Faust is unique. Subtitled Dramatic Legend, it was not intended for actual stage presentation; while it has Dramatis Personae, it lacks the sequential development of plot and character that opera usually offers. Instead, it only pictures the main characters and delineates their relationships...