Alfred Brendel (b1931) needs no introduction; as one of the most notable pianists of the second half of the 20th century, his many recordings, on Vox, then Vanguard, and finally, for the most significant years of his maturity, Philips, have been almost constantly in the catalogue and have been reissued repeatedly. But there is one small corner of his recorded legacy that remains almost unknown—the four LPs he recorded at the start of his career in the early 1950s for the American label SPA.

The immediate post-war period saw a resurgence of recording activity, as the arrival of the LP in 1948 and the tape-recorder, a German wartime technological development, made making new recordings both easier and more commercially attractive. One of the results of this was that a whole host of small independent labels were established on both sides of the Atlantic to take advantage of these advances. Another fallout of the war was that Europe was impoverished and many young musicians, desperate to make a living, were willing to make recordings very cheaply, as were Continental orchestras. Vienna became a new centre of recording for these new, particularly US, labels and much of the early catalogue of Vox, Westminster, Concert Hall and several smaller labels was made there.

Brendel was one of many pianists (others included Paul Badura-Skoda, Jörg Demus, Edith Farnadi, Walter Klien and Friedrich Wührer) who found themselves in Vienna at this time and who were able to take advantage of these opportunities. Brendel’s first recording, made on 25 January 1951, was of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 5 with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra conducted by Jonathan Sternberg. A work new to the gramophone, this was originally made for the American Period label, with a UK release that same year on Nixa. The rights were later transferred to Vox when Brendel started a ten-year association with that label in 1955. Between that first recording and the Vox years came the aforementioned SPA recordings.

SPA Records (The Society of Participating Artists Inc.) was established by the conductor F. Charles Adler and Norman Fox in Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1951. It had a short life, ceasing to record by 1956. Adler was the creative director and set out to record important works not yet committed to disc. On the symphonic front he himself conducted several pioneering Mahler and Bruckner recordings with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. There were also notable recordings of works by contemporary composers such as Krenek and Milhaud. Further areas of repertoire were of neglected instrumental and chamber music from the past and it was into this category that Brendel’s SPA discs fell. These were as follows:

SPA26 Franz Liszt: Weihnachtsbaum (given as The Christmas Tree on the disc cover)

This was Brendel’s first SPA recording and was released in the autumn of 1952. No recording dates have survived but it was probably laid down earlier the same year.

SPA28 Ludwig van Beethoven: Flute Sonata in B flat major, Anh4 & Trio in G major for Bassoon, Flute & Piano, WoO37

In these two juvenile works of Beethoven (the Flute Sonata not even confirmed to be by him) Brendel was joined by Camillo Wanausek (flute) and Leo Cermak (bassoon).

SPA49 Richard Strauss: Five Piano Pieces, Op 3 & Piano Sonata in B minor, Op 5

These early works by Strauss were first recordings at the time and it is quite surprising to see Brendel performing this repertoire. We had originally hoped to reissue this LP along with the Liszt and Busoni albums, but Mr Brendel has requested that we do not, citing that he is not happy with his performances. We are pleased to respect his wish.

SPA56 Ferruccio Busoni: Fantasia Contrappuntistica & Bach/Busoni Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ

This is the most significant of these early recordings and presents Busoni’s solo piano masterwork in its first ever recording. In the 1952/3 concert season Brendel had performed the work in concert in Vienna to great critical acclaim and it must have been recorded shortly after (once again, no definitive dates are available). The recording was reissued in the UK in 1960 by the subscription-only Record Society Ltd, and The Gramophone reviewed it at this time—after giving a detailed and positive description of the work it went on to conclude:

Since the time of Egon Petri there has been no leading exponent of Busoni’s somewhat rarefied style; but Brendel appears to have been made for the part. His technical and intellectual control throughout the complex structure, in which he succeeds remarkably in establishing a unity, never falters; and his part playing is masterly.

Alfred Brendel has long been a champion of Busoni’s mature works, but unfortunately he recorded very few—there are only two Bach/Busoni chorale preludes, two of the Elegies and, most importantly, the Toccata, amongst his Philips recordings. While it is a pity that he was not to return to the Fantasia Contrappuntistica in his later years to give it the benefit of a modern stereo recording, the pianist regards this SPA release as one that particularly merits reissue. We are therefore very pleased to be able to give this historic LP its first release in the digital age, along with his first SPA disc of Liszt’s Weihnachtsbaum.

Michael Spring © 2024

Alfred Brendel on Busoni …
While still in my teens I got hold of a collection of Ferruccio Busoni’s writings. Before long, I started to write about him myself and also performed and recorded his Fantasia Contrappuntistica in Vienna. His Toccata 1921, another of his outstanding piano works, I had copied by hand as his compositions at that time were not commercially available. What fascinated me right away was Busoni’s diversity: pianist, composer, teacher, writer, avid collector of books, editor and transcriber, aesthete, lover of the visual arts and architec­ture as well as of the theatre, indefatigable correspondent, all of this in one person. As one of the most celebrated pianists of his day, he had presented six Liszt recitals in Berlin and a survey of the piano literature in eight recitals in Milan. To his disciple Egon Petri he wrote in 1911 that he hadn’t practised the piano for five months! His technical wizardry, his ears and his memory must have been phenomenal. Like his great pianistic rival Eugen d’Albert, Busoni composed operas. While d’Albert’s once popular Tiefland sunk into oblivion, Busoni’s masterpiece Doktor Faust has posthumously received a string of impressive performances.

I still have to mention Busoni’s famous Bach transcriptions, particularly of organ works. In his Outline of a New Aesthetic of Music (Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst) he maintains that each notation is already the adaptation of an abstract musical idea. Busoni, as a performer, was a habitual transcriber. Even the shellac recordings that he grudgingly produced towards the end of his career contain a few ‘additional’ notes. Of his own compositions, there is usually more than one version. The second, ‘definitive’ version of his Aesthetic received several fascinating footnotes by Arnold Schoenberg whose views are quite different. According to Schoenberg, the performer ought not to act as the tutor of an orphaned work or its ‘pastoral advisor’ but as its ‘most ardent servant’. Two things may present an obstacle: the composer’s notation, and the servant’s imperfect disposition. I am on Schoenberg’s side, though of course there are those who think that a performer lacks imagination if he or she merely plays what is written while it’s a demonstration of genius to turn everything upside down.

In Busoni’s life as a composer we can identify three periods. After his youthful eclecticism there was a post-Brahmsian spell culminating in the Second Violin Sonata and the monstrous Piano Concerto, works still performed today. They were followed in 1907 by his set of Elegies for piano of which the first bears the indicative title ‘After the turnaround’ (‘Nach der Wendung’). Soon, Busoni emerged as one of the leaders of the musical avant-garde next to Schoenberg (whose Pierrot Lunaire Busoni organised to be performed at his house) who, after Busoni’s death, took over his composition class in Berlin.

Busoni the person was described as charismatic, fiery, ingenious, virile, enjoying a laugh, childlike and superstitious, sceptical but also tending towards mysticism if not the occult. In the score of Contrappuntistica we encounter the words ‘misterioso’ and ‘visionario’. Busoni was brimming with contradictions. Arlecchino and Faust. Goethe and E.T.A. Hoffmann. A 12-tone melody within the Rondo Arlecchinesco. Turandot and his Mozart Aphorisms (one of his literary peaks). The gigantomania of the Piano Concerto next to his ascetic Sonatinas. Beethoven: yes and no. April fool (he was born on 1 April) as well as an Easter egg (it was Easter Monday). In his Doktor Faust, Easter figures prominently which should have amused him. And of course there is the pact with the devil. Mercifully, I was too young to have met Busoni: he smoked cigars and owned a huge St Bernard called Giotto that liked to sink its teeth into smaller dogs and chickens.

I shouldn’t forget to mention the piano students whom Busoni often taught without remuneration, among them some that were able to tackle his Concerto under his baton. (Yes, he also conducted.) And among the composers he taught were Kurt Weill, Vladimir Vogel and Philipp Jarnach. Another composer who, while never his pupil, was strongly under his spell was Edgar Varèse.

The largest of his piano works, Fantasia Contrappuntistica (the spelling with ‘pp’ which Busoni uses is the correct Italian form), was composed in 1910 and carries the performer to the outer limits of polyphonic playing. It attempts to complete in a modern idiom the unfinished final fugue Bach’s Kunst der Fuge, starting with chorale variations on ‘Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr’ (almost identical with his Third Elegy) and presenting three Fugues, an Intermezzo, three Variations, and a Cadenza followed by a fourth Fugue, a further chorale, and a Stretta. We can listen to this work with two different ears: one that registers Busoni’s audacity in competing with Bach’s towering mastery (as it appears, there was in Busoni, no lack of self-confidence); the other one may let itself be disarmed and carried away by the aura of mystery brought about by an inspiring performance.

It was one of Busoni’s peculiarities that most of what he composed ‘after the turnaround’ he later used as material for his Doktor Faust. It became a kind of inventory that embraces what he had composed before. A strange union of past and present has been achieved. ‘Has Doktor Faust come to grief?’ asks Mephistopheles at the very end of the opera. It rather seems to me that he had stayed amazingly alive.

At the centre of Busoni’s pianistic repertoire, we find two composers: Bach and Liszt. Throughout his life Busoni was working on a comprehensive Bach Edition while at the same time amassing a huge collection of works by Liszt that will, no doubt, have included Liszt’s Weihnachtsbaum. Composed as a Christmas present for his grandchild Daniela von Bülow, it presents a string of enchanting late pieces which demonstrate that Liszt, even while turning out bleak experiments like Unstern and Csárdás macabre, had not lost a naïf sense of wonder.

Alfred Brendel © 2024