Ferruccio Busoni was a maestro Italian pianist who revolutionised piano transcription, truly bringing it into the modern era. At a time when transcriptions of organ music for piano clung tightly to the Romantic tradition, Busoni had the courage to take an interpretative, emancipatory approach, bringing out all of the unique qualities of the piano in his work, while remaining faithful to the core of Bach’s compositions. The comparable virtues of ‘rhythmic precision [and] greater impetuosity’ which he attributed to the piano are very much audible in this extraordinary album, from the delightful Prelude and Fugue in D major to the grandiose and virtuosic Two Toccatas, which Busoni placed at the very top of his ascending scale of difficulty for the transcriptions. The moods in this set range from soaring, majestic pieces that seem to aim straight at the heavens to poignant moments of the most sublime intimacy.

At the time, Busoni’s transcriptions were popular and controversial in equal parts, but his enduring success is manifest in the fact that today, his name has become inextricably linked with Bach. Perhaps most crucial to this achievement was, as album artist Sandro Ivo Bartoli puts it, his ‘lifelong, esoteric flirtation with achieving the impossible’.

Sandro Ivo Bartoli is one of the foremost interpreters of early 20th-century Italian piano music, and has played all over the world with orchestras such as the Philharmonia in London and the Deutsche Philharmonie. He also collaborated closely with the late great pianist Shura Cherkassky.