Delucchi and the Rediscovery of the Busoni Synthesis

Pianist Emanuele Delucchi’s recording of Ferruccio Busoni’s late works illustrates the neoclassical) (a twentieth-century trend in which composers sought to return to aesthetic precepts associated with classicism) transition that moved piano literature away from Romantic excess. The performance focuses on the Elegien and Sonatina IV, works where Busoni used historical forms to stabilize a radicalized harmonic vocabulary. Delucchi negotiates the contrapuntal (the relationship between voices that are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and contour) density with a clarity that foregrounds Busoni’s search for an objective purity. Score on IMSLP. The recording serves as a technical correction to the myth of Busoni as a mere transcriber, positioning him instead as the architect of the polytonality (the simultaneous use of two or more keys in a musical composition) that would define the 1920s.