Description
So far as we know, here’s what happened: Liszt started work on a fantasy on themes from Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro. He wrote a bunch of material on the themes he chose, all of which he left on different pages, and never completed the transitions (most likely he improvised them). Busoni heard about this unfinished work, got his hands on it, cut out the stuff from Don Giovanni, filled in the relatively minor transitional gaps, wrote several bars of closing material, and published this as a performing version of the fantasy. It’s a wonderful work; taut and heartfelt and almost entirely bloat-free, imbued with a propulsive sense of harmonic invention and melodic directness.
Structurally, the work is simple. It starts with a long introduction built around the free manipulation of motifs from Non piu andrai (NPA), before slipping into a tender presentation (3:34) of Voi chi sapete (VCS). We then get a transition built off a fragment of NPA (8:25), after which NPA is directly presented (with some fun harmonic changes) (9:27). This leads into an extended coda (13:40) built off the marchlike ending of NPA that features some of Liszt’s most treacherous (and spikily beautiful) bars.
00:00 – Khozyainov
15:02 – Thibaudet
28:37 – Raekaillo
The three performances here are a lot of fun. Khozyainov is tender and lyrical, with a lot of careful textural shading in the dreamy VCS section. There is one moment of standout virtuosity, when he suddenly accelerates into the Giocoso section of the coda (14:04). Thibaudet is lithe, less rhetorical and more propulsive, with sparing use of the pedal generating some nice textures (the LH 32nds in the second presentation of VCS). Raekaillo is fierce, with big climaxes and tempi even harder-driven than Thibaudet’s. It isn’t about speed (although, see 40:23) as much as the pleasing lack of caution with which he charges right through treacherous passages of thirds and octaves. There’s nice textural touches too, such as the percussiveness in the LH double notes in the Giocoso.