Altarus AIR-CD-9074 [Distr. by Albany], 60:05 ****:
The fusion of Ferruccio’s Busoni’s music and the demonic pianism of John Ogden (1937-1989) formed a natural alchemy of like elements. A pupil of Egon Petri, himself an acolyte of Busoni, Ogden matured in a school of complexity and musical labyrinths. Here, Ogden plays Busoni’s magnum keyboard opus, the 1910 Fantasia contrapuntistica – Busoni’s attempt to complete, in his own idiom, the triple fugue Bach left unfinished in The Art of Fugue. Using his own Third Elegie (1907) as his musical basis, with its incorporation of a chorale whose subject is virtually an inversion of the subject for his first fugue, Busoni fashioned a titanic piece of architecture whose proportions, he wrote, would correspond to the Palace of the Popes at Avignon. This structure–chorale prelude, three fugues, intermezzo, variations, cadenza, quadruple fugue, chorale and coda–can only be likened to some grand Renaissance scheme, a “new” paradigm in the tradition of Leonardo da Vinci.
The deliberately antiquarian sound Busoni cultivates is no less a distillation of Franck and Liszt, especially the latter’s Dante Sonata. Ogden paces and pounds this music, sometimes hammering, often trilling and strumming its polyphonic contours, attempting to clarify lines that do occasionally succumb to the weight of academic proficiency. Busoni is more a composer of keyboard, Renaissance motets than of classical forms. Addenda to the score, quotations from Frescobaldi and his own opera, Dr. Faustus, contribute to the atmosphere of intellectual rigor that pervades this somber music, a pursuit of Beauty, likened to Apollo’s lust for Daphne, which proves as elusive as the horizon.
The 1909 Fantasia After J.S. Bach (In Memory of My Father) I first heard with Egon Petri on an EMI Great Instrumentalists LP. Busoni utilizes light, arpeggiated figures to bring in the Bach chorale Christ, du bist der helle Tag accompanied by three repeated notes, the tolling of funeral bells. Soon, Busoni will splice In dulci jubilo and Lob sei dem allmaechtigen Gott in free rhapsodic and fugal treatment. Ogden’s soft dynamic and piercing intonation create a mesmerizing effect, at once an etude and a benediction. The last five bars Busoni marks Riconciliato–PAX EI! a final palm leaf to the composer’ father Ferdinando and music performed at John Ogden’s own funeral.
The startling, florid opening of the Toccata (c. 1922) takes us into a world Mephistopheles inhabits, whether Busoni’s or Liszt’s from the Faust-Symphony. In three parts, the Toccata accounts for Bach while self-promoting Busoni’s Die Brautwahl, especially the character of the doomed Duchess of Parma’s aria. The music moves irresistibly into a haunted Chaconne, many of whose lines will recall both Liszt and Orcagna, each a celebrant of the power of Death.
— Gary Lemco
