About a decade separates Jeni Slotchiver’s second “Busoni The Visionary” release from the present third volume. Her solid technique and innate empathy for the composer’s fascinating though not terribly lovable keyboard idiom remain ever intact.
She shapes the Toccata forthrightly, with carefully scaled dynamics and climaxes, although the Marc-André Hamelin and live Alfred Brendel recordings minimize the music’s squareness by virtue of faster tempos and more visceral excitement. Slotchiver presents Busoni’s Variations on Chopin’s C minor Prelude in the pared down 1922 revision, where her smooth tempo relationships between sections and incisively animated fugue yield nothing to Wolf Harden’s excellent yet comparably soft-grained interpretation.
She captures the arpeggio-based Prélude and Etude’s leggiero qualities well, yet Hamelin’s brisker, suaver pianism in the Etude conveys the composer’s violinisticamente articulation and long cantus firmus bass lines to more convincing effect. However, Slotchiver’s firmly etched articulation and sustained characterization throughout the admittedly long-winded Fantasia on Bach unambiguously succeeds, notably in her assured inner-voice double notes.
She plays the more modest and lyrical Nuit de Noël sensitively and simply, while projecting a true maestoso in the Bach/Busoni “St. Anne” Prelude. Her attention to Busoni’s requests for extreme legato and specific espressivo phrasings add profile and point to the thick textures. I only question her uncommonly slow fugue: Busoni, to be sure, marks it Sostenuto e tranquillo, yet, to my way of thinking, the alla breve time signature signifies greater animation. Still, the pianist makes her conception work. Slotchiver’s extensive, scholarly, yet always readable annotations, together with the warm clarity of Tim Martyn’s production, enhance this worthy addition to the Busoni discography.