Kammer-Fantasie über Bizets “Carmen” (1920)

Feruccio Busoni

Kammer-Fantasie über Bizets “Carmen” (1920)

(Sonatina No.6)

Allegro deciso – Andantino – Allegretto tranquillo – Allegro ritenuto – Andante visionario

“The only person who no longer benefits (nor benefited) from all this,” said Busoni in an irritated comment on the lucrative and widespread Carmen industry, “is poor old Bizet himself.” He was right of course. Bizet died too soon – after the 33rd of the initial run of 45 mainly ill-attended performances of his last opera at the Opéra-Comique in 1875 – to write a Carmen suite or capitalise in any other way on a work he tbelieved to be a failure. Where he lost out others have cashed in with countless Carmen arrangements, fantasies, variations, ballets, musicals, films…

Busoni’s comment was inspired by less than pure compassion, however. His irritation was provoked in fact by the copyright problems put in the way of his recently completed Chamber Fantasy on Bizet’s “Carmen” (Sonatina No.6), which is surely the most distinguished product of the Carmen industry. What distinguishes it from all the others is its sensitivity to the emotional issues and the fatalistic aspect of the opera. Busoni does not make the mistake, however, of making a heavy-handed approach to the kind of work that generically requires a show of wit as well as technical brilliance. Discreetly concealing his thoughtful intentions, Busoni begins with a bright and busy treatment of the opening chorus of the fourth act and then slows down for a con amore memory of “La fleur que tu m’as jetée.” Any of his composer-pianist contemporaries might have done the same, if not with the harmonically complex decorations Busoni adds to Don José’s aria.

The only just perceptible echo of the fate motif introduced in the left hand at the end of flower-song episode is a timely hint, however, that this is going to be no mindless anthology, While an episode devoted to the Habanera was only to be expected and while Busoni was by no means the first composer to indulge himself in the march of the Toreadors, the demonic variation on the one and the impressionistic dissolve applied to the other are entirely out of the ordinary. Most inspired of all is the last page, an Andante visionario that combines sad allusions to the fate theme with subtle reminders of the Habanera and ends with a long-withheld confirmation of the composer’s serious intentions in a sombre A minor. Written too late to be of any interest to Liszt, Carmen had at last, after thirty five years, found a piano interpretation worthy of it.