Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 09/28/2016, uploaded on 05/04/2017

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Chaconne from Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004   Johann Sebastian Bach, arranged by Ferruccio Busoni

Four bars of music – that’s all it is. In a material sense, perhaps not enough, but what Bach achieves in the 64 variations of this Chaconne from the second partita for solo violin is one of the greatest pieces written for that instrument. The admiration and reverence for this piece has taken on many forms, like Brahms’ appraisal of it: ‘The Chaconne is one of the most spectacular, and least understood, pieces of music ever written. In a single staff line, for a small instrument, the man writes a fully formed world of the deepest thoughts and the most powerful emotions.’ Violinist Joshua Bell goes even further calling it ‘one of the greatest achievements of any man in history’. It is with the greatest respect that Ferruccio Busoni made his transcription some 180 years later. Busoni was big on Bach transcriptions, figuratively as well as literally: his edition of Bach’s piano works is a set of seven monumental volumes. Bach-Busoni is a fixture in the pianist's vocabulary.    Notes by Rob Hilberink

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.