Busoni, Bortkievich, Britten (1996)

The Indian Fantasy (Indianische Fantasie) is a fantasy for piano and orchestra that Busoni vomposed in 1913. The piece is based on several melodies and rhythms from various American Indian tribes; Busoni had received them from American ethnomusicologist Natalie Curtis Burlin. The fantasy describes the American prairie, and is in three movements. Bortkiewicz's piano style was very much based on Liszt and Chopin, nurtured by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, early Scriabin, Wagner and Russian folklore. He was unaffected by the music trends of the 20th century the composer never saw himself as a "modernist". His workmanship is meticulous, his imagination colourful and sensitive, his piano writing idiomatic; a lush instrumentation underlines the essential sentimentality of the melodic invention. Benjamin Britten's First piano concerto is a 'bravura' work that has gained more international attention in recent years. Britten described the piece as "simple and in direct form". (bron: Wikipedia)