Toccata, Adagio & Fugue in C major, BWV 564 (arr. Busoni)

arranged for piano by Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1925)

The Complete Bach-Busoni Edition - published in no fewer than seven volumes in Leipzig in 1920 - contains an extraordinary and fascinating variety of arrangements, transcriptions, realisations and performing versions intended, basically, to make Bach accessible to the pianist of the day. Inevitably, they are dismissed by all but the most broad-minded of present-day Bach scholars and, quite properly, they are avoided by pianists in search of authentic texts for their Bach repertoire. They do, on the other hand, display not only an intimate knowledge of the piano but also, in many cases, a profound understanding of the music itself. The most celebrated example, the essential Bach-Busoni hybrid, is the arrangement of the unaccompanied violin Chaconne in D minor, which is a classic of its kind. Not quite as interesting, in that they are less creative, but equally impressive as piano music are the virtuoso transcriptions of organ pieces published in the same volume.

As a disciple of Liszt as well as a worshipper of Bach, Busoni must have been in two minds in his approach to the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major. Bearing in mind that the introductory scalic flourishes would not sound the same on a piano in a concert hall as they do on an organ in a church acoustic, should he fill out the texture? And what should he do about the long exposition for pedals only of the main theme of the Toccata? In fact, he decided against the Lisztian solution and, where he felt it necessary to add resonance to what would otherwise have been a bare line, he did little more than supply octave doublings.

In fact, it is the consistent doubling at the octave, often involving the very bottom end of the keyboard, that gives this transcription its characteristically imposing sound. The exception is the central Adagio - a (for Bach) rare episode between prelude and fugue - which is treated here with a sensitivity altogether worthy of its expressive melodic line. The grinding harmonies at the end of the Adagio lead, incongruously, into one of the most attractive of all Bach’s fugues with a four-part texture no less lucid in Busoni’s resourceful piano version than in the original.