Busoni: Organ Works, Classicamente – Paolo Bottini

   in Choir & Organ (Nov, 2017)
Well, this is quirky. The Italian organist Paolo Bottini adapts a number of early piano compositions of Ferruccio Busoni and performs them with astonishing imagination and no little virtuosity. The music pre-dates Busoni’s later expansion of his musical vocabulary (with the partial exception of the densely modulating Contrapunctisches Tanzstück), drawing on a romantic tonal language with earlier inspirations: a Prelude & Fugue, four charming Danze antiche and, among the wonderful miniatures of the 24 Preludes op.37, pieces in the style of a Gigue and a Chorale. The organ is hardly distinguished (and the reeds often comically out of tune), but Bottini has sought out myriad colours which contribute to a hugely …