Fantasy On Themes From Mozart's ''The Marriage of Figaro'' and ''Don Giovanni'' - Busoni Performing Version

Busoni Performing Version

At some point the pianist-composer Ferruccio Busoni, who has been described as "probably the most open and enthusiastic Liszt exponent in the early twentieth century," became aware of the unpublished manuscript and prepared a performing version which he first played in 1911 in Berlin. Busoni gave a series of six all-Liszt recitals in mid-October of that year, playing nearly all of the major piano works, and these are the concerts at which his version of the Figaro Fantasy most likely received its first performance. (Busoni had been on tour in the United States for the first three months of the year, and these were his first piano recitals after returning to Europe in April.)

Later, in the summer of 1912, after the unsuccessful premiere of his Wagnerian-length opera Die Brautwahl in mid-April and a concert tour through Italy in May, Busoni decided to stay home alone in Berlin to work, while his wife Gerda was in Switzerland on holiday. It was during this period of time that he prepared his version of Liszt's Fantasy for publication. The manuscript (No. 245 in the Busoni Archive) is dated 11 July 1912. It was published soon after by Breitkopf & Härtel under the title Franz Liszt. Fantasie über zwei Motive aus W. A. Mozarts Die Hochzeit des Figaro. Nach dem fast vollendeten Originalmanuskript ergänzt und Moriz Rosenthal zugeeignet von Ferruccio Busoni (BV B 66). As the title suggests, Busoni had omitted all of the music from Don Giovanni, shortening a piece of more than 597 bars by 245 bars. The changes also included Busoni's 16-bar completion, as well as 10 additional bars on p. 28, and other elaborations of 5, 1 and 4 bars duration, including expression marks, cadenzas, and ossias. Unfortunately, no editorial notes were included, so there was little or no indication of the extensive changes to the original. (That summer he had also arranged and composed music for the edizione minore of the Fantasia contrappuntistica, the Sonatina Seconda for piano, and incidental music for Frank Wedekind's play Franziska, consisting of sketches for twelve numbers which he never finished. He also shortened and modified the music of Die Brautwahl for a new production and extensively rearranged the music into a suite for concert performance. There is no mention of, nor was there much time available for a trip to Weimar to re-examine Liszt's manuscript, and it is now clear that his version was never intended to be a scholarly edition of Liszt's piece.)