This was a part of Amnesty International’s ‘The Secret Policeman’s Ball’, filmed in 1979 and also starring such notable talent as John Cleese, Billy Connoly, Michael Palin, Peter Cook. The Secret Policeman’s Balls is the collective name informally used to describe the long-running series of benefit shows staged in England to raise funds for the human rights organisation Amnesty International. The shows started out in the mid-1970s primarily as comedy galas featuring popular British comedic performers and later expanded to include leading musical performers.
The Italian pianist Btant achievements as a composer were long over-shadoweusoni’s impord by the fact that he was generally thought the greatest piano virtuoso after Liszt.
He also made his mark as a respected teacher of both piano playing and composition, and as an editor of Bach’s keyboard music. His thoughts on Bach’s music have been highly influential, although his editions weren’t exactly what we today would call authentic.
True or not, the story of Busoni’s wife being introduced at a function as Mrs. Bach-Busoni says a lot about how famous Busoni’s Bach transcriptions were already in his own lifetime.
In spite of his interest in baroque and classical music, Busoni was certainly no backward-looking composer. In his writings he proposes the use of microtonal scales and electronics, and in 1912 he produced his first work “without tonality”, the Second Sonatina.
Busoni’s major keyboard work, Contrapuntal Fantasy, is based on the final, incomplete fugue from Bach’s Art of Fugue.
To have a look on Busoni's 25 Original Pieces and 15 Bach Transcriptions.You first have to be a Gold member of Piano Streets Online Library.