붓꽃 독백 - Mikhail Pletnev <Bach Busoni - Chaconne in D Minor, BWV 1004>

Bach Busoni - Chaconne in D Minor, BWV 1004

Bach-Busoni Chaconne in D Minor was played by Mikhail Pletnev live at Carnegie Hall on 1 Nov. 2000.

Bach wrote his Chaconne as the fifth movement of his 1720 Partita #2 for solo violin in a state of grief on returning from a three-month trip and learning that his wife had died. A century and a half later, Johannes Brahms transcribed the Chaconne for piano, left hand, writing to his friend Clara Schumann: on one stave, for a small instru­ment, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived, the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth- shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."

In 1892, piano virtuoso Ferruccio Busoni, at that time teaching in Boston, transcribed the Chaconne for piano, two hands. Reproached by his dedicatee, celebrated pianist Eugen d'Albert, for "tampering" with this revered work, Busoni replied, "I start from the impression that Bach's conception of the work goes far beyond the limits and means of the violin, so that the instrument he specifies for performance is not adequate." Indeed Bach had left us only the "bare bones"— the notes themselves with no instruc­tions, explanations, or directions for tempi and dynamics for his complex, polyphonic masterpiece. Busoni applied the resources of the modern grand piano—its volume, range, and sustaining power—to augment Bach's contrapuntal scoring for solo violin.