Renowned Italian pianist Giuseppe Scotese will present a piano recital featuring the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) at 8 p.m. May 1 in Graham Chapel.
Scotese primarily focuses on the music of the 18th and 20th centuries and frequently juxtaposes them in concert.
The recital will feature a program of parallel works by Bach and Busoni, the latter of whom is probably best known for his grand transcriptions of Bach’s organ music for the modern piano. (Vladimir Horowitz and other great 20th-century pianists regularly included Busoni’s transcriptions in their concert repertoire.)
The program will begin with Bach’s setting of the chorale Ehre Sei Gott in Der Hohe, followed by Busoni’s Elegy No. 3: Chorale Prelude on Bach’s Chorale Meine Seele Bangt Und Hofft Zu Dir. Scotese will then perform Contrapunctus No. 19 from Bach’s The Art of the Fugue, a compilation of imitative compositions.
Concluding the recital will be Busoni’s Fantasia Contrappuntistica, which contains Busoni’s variations on Bach’s Ehre Sei Gott in Der Hohe.
He has recorded the piano sonatas of Giovanni Benedetto Piatti as well as the several discs of contemporary music.
His own composition, Three Studies for Piano, was published by Ricordi, Italy’s leading music publisher.
The concert is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences. For more information, call 935-4841 or e-mail staylor@wustl.edu.