Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924):
Sonatina in diem nativitatis Christi MCMXVII, for piano (No. 4), KiV 274
Michael von Zadora (1882-1946), piano
Recorded 1938

As one of the greatest living pianists, Busoni's concert tours took him from St. Petersburg to San Francisco--he was a thorough cosmopolitan and a conscious European. Nationalism in music he regarded as a limitation, a cul-de-sac, and chauvinism loomed as a cramp in the human spirit. Proud of his Italian heritage, Busoni lived for 30 years in Berlin and wrote his stage works in German--his "foreign" presence brought out the worst in xenophobic German critics, while he could be scathing in return. To Bernard van Dieren, he writes, "Oh these Germans, with their Our Bach,' Our Beethoven'! blessing and cursing in the name of Our-Great-Men with High Priestly solemnity. At the same time speaking of them with offensive familiarity and quasi-parental pride. As if they had a share in the merits." To Egon Petri--"The German is the greatest sufferer from Heimweh: he loves to make poems about it. Art is at home everywhere. The German is bourgeois, art is aristocratic." When it became evident that the First World War would not be over in a matter of months, as was widely expected, Busoni--with artists from all over Europe--took refuge in Zürich in 1915, remaining until 1920, refusing to comment publicly or to perform in any of the belligerent nations. Staid, Calvinist Zürich became for the interim the artistic capital of Europe, with a number of developments shaping the Modern spirit in the making there. James Joyce was writing Ulysses. Tristan Tzara and Hans Arp were initiating the calculated effronteries of Dadaism. In Küsnacht, a Zürich suburb, C. G. Jung was experiencing a protracted "confrontation with the unconscious." On April 8, 1917, the sealed train carrying Lenin to the Finland Station left from Zürich. And Busoni composed Arlecchino and the major portion of Doktor Faust in Zürich. And over four days in December 1917 Busoni wrote the Sonatina in diem nativitatis Christi--one of the most deftly perfect of all his works and a study for Doktor Faust. The opening three-part invention is soon enveloped in a visionary aura--distant, emphatic, evanescent--dissolving in an incantatory chordal chorale (which Antony Beaumont believes "is probably the music originally visualized for the end of Doktor Faust") and giving way Moderatamente vivace to a snapping pifferata--a Italianate pastorale--before the initial invention returns, garlanded in triplets, quasi trasfigurato tutto dolce to end quietly in mystic splendor. Busoni gave the Sonatina's premiere, January 24, 1920, at the Zürich Tonhalle. ~ Adrian Corleonis, All Music Guide

http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/6/6b/IMSLP34764-PML...

Paintings:
Duccio di Buoninsegna (1308)
Master of Flémalle (1420)
Piero della Francesca (1470) (less info)