Busoni: Fantasia Contrappuntistica; Liszt: Weihnachtsbaum in Bloomington, MN

It may be surprising for listeners raised on
Alfred Brendel
's recordings of the Viennese classics to learn that some of his first recordings were of
Busoni
and
Liszt
. But the music on this historical reissue, capturing rare recordings made in 1952 and 1953, makes sense upon first listen.
's
Fantasia Contrappuntistica
has the same mix of the cerebral and the slightly mystical that animates
Brendel
's mature
Beethoven
performances. The work is something of an oddball, partly a completion of
Bach
's unfinished
The Art of the Fugue, BWV 1080
, and partly a typically
-an elaboration on
's language. It is fearsomely virtuosic in spots, but virtuosity is not its main point, and the 22-year-old
gives a marvelous, calm, contrapuntally clear performance that seems to lead the listener into
's hall of mirrors.
Weihnachtsbaum
, too, has virtuoso passages but aims at something other than virtuosity; it is largely written for children, even if they couldn't play it, and it has some of the freedom of
's final years. Sample his unique treatment of
Adeste fideles
(the work treats various Christmas materials). Both the performances here marked the world-recorded premieres of these works, and they come with an elegant essay by
on the
piece, as well as various notes on the reissue of material originally released on the U.S.
SPA
label (the name refers both to the issuing body and to the local name for Saratoga Springs, New York, where the label was headquartered). The transfers are clean, with little distortion at the ends of the frequency range, and in all this is a pearl of a historical reissue, of interest to more than just
fans. ~ James Manheim