Ferruccio Busoni - String Quartets (Pellegrini Quartet)

Information

Composer: Ferruccio Busoni

• (01) String Quartet in C major, Op. 19
• (05) String Quartet in D minor, Op. 26

Pellegrini Quartet
Antonio Pellegrini, violin
Thomas Hofer, violin
Charlotte Geselbracht, viola
Helmut Menzler, cello

Date: 1995
Label: cpo

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Review

As always with Busoni, ignore the opus numbers (he seems to have made a regular habit of going back to Op. 1 every few years). But whatever you do, don’t assume when you learn that these are both early works that they are therefore minor Busoni. Or perhaps on second thoughts you should: I did, and I cannot say which gave me the more delighted surprise, the sheer quality of Op. 19, probably written when Busoni was 17, or the remarkable advance on it of Op. 26, dating from four years later.

Op. 19 is by a young man who knows and loves Schubert, loves him for his serenity as well as his effortless flow of melody. But it was a young man who knew much more than how to imitate effectively who wrote the consistently absorbing development section of the first movement, who hit upon the striking, rather Nordic-sounding trio to the charming minuet-scherzo, and who played such exhilarating games of ‘hunt the bar-line’ in the finale. It is a lovely work, fully worthy of a place in the repertory, and the fact that this appears to be its first recording is astonishing.

And, believe it or not, Op. 26 is even finer. It is a work full of continuous change and diverting surprise, so packed with resource that you once or twice think that Busoni is showing off, until you reflect that any 21-year-old with gifts like these may be permitted to show off a little. And very often his surprises are quiet ones, in any case, not flashy at all: the gentle shadows that fall across the rather Dvorakian slow movement; the hushed lyrical idea that several times fades to silence between the finale’s athletic bursts of counterpoint. Like Op. 19 it is a quartet of real stature whose neglect until now is inexplicable.

In a strictly chronological catalogue of Busoni’s works these two quartets would be Op. 208 and Op. 221 respectively. The more the music of his amazingly prolific youth is discovered, the more likely it seems that he was perhaps this century’s most breathtakingly gifted prodigy. In that context these quartets are not really ‘early Busoni’ at all, but the works of a fully mature master. How good that for their first recording they should have found such players as these: the Pellegrini Quartet are quite superb, beautifully responsive to Busoni’s subtleties, his wit and his melodic refinement. The recordings are excellent.

-- Michael Oliver, Gramophone

More reviews:
https://www.allmusic.com/album/busoni-string-quartets-nos-1-2-mw0001804393
https://www.amazon.com/Busoni-String-Quartets-1-2/dp/B000001RY4

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Ferruccio Busoni (1 April 1866 – 27 July 1924) was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor, editor, writer, and piano teacher. Busoni was an outstanding (if sometimes controversial) pianist from an early age. He began composing in his early years in a late romantic style, and later developed a more individual one, often with elements of atonality. His compositions include works and transcriptions for piano, chamber music, vocal, orchestral works and also operas. Busoni's impact on music was more through those who studied piano and composition with him, and through his writings on music, than through his compositions themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferruccio_Busoni

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The Pellegrini Quartet was founded in 1989 in Freiburg, Germany. The ensemble was named after its 1st violinist Antonio Pellegrini. Its repertoire includes works of the Renaissance, the Baroque, the Viennese Classical, the early Modern (Alexander von Zemlinsky, Hanns Eisler) and composers of the second half of the 20th century (including Morton Feldman, John Cage, Luigi Nono and Giacinto Scelsi). The Quartet has close collaborations with contemporary composers such as Klaus Huber, Péter Eötvös, Salvatore Sciarrino and Walter Levin. Its discography focuses on works by contemporary composers.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellegrini-Quartett

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