Piano Music Vol.1

Adrian Corleonis
Fanfare, January 2009
"Gravely charming...The sound strikes an almost ideal balance between detail and mass in a spacious aural frame."

Jed Distler
ClassicsToday.com, May 2001
"Here comes yet another cycle from Naxos, this time Ferruccio Busoni's piano music. Presumably this overview will encompass all the original works and transcriptions. Busoni's original compositions, in fact, often behave like transcriptions. The mighty Fantasia Contrappuntistica, for example, is a full blown fantasia with the final, unfinished contrapunctus of Bach's The Art of Fugue as its centerpiece. An die Jugend's five movements pay a sort of hommage to keyboard styles past and present (meaning Busoni's present). The Preludietto, Fughetta ed Esecizio's whole-tone scales sound like Debussy echt Deutsch. The third movement is essentially Bach's D major Prelude and Fugue from the Well Tempered Clavier Book 1 with discreet textural padding, followed by the prelude and fugue ingenuously combined.

"It reminds me of Godowsky's chicanery (his combination of Chopin's 'Black Key' and 'Butterfly' Etudes, for example), ...there's much to savor in [Wolf Harden's] clean fingerwork and rich, bass-oriented sonority. He digs into Busoni's massive chord climaxes like a hungry trencherman about to enjoy his aged Porterhouse steak, and he shades the composer's polytonal arpeggios with great sensitivity. There's no doubt that Harden has the technique and temperament for this repertoire, and I look forward to more."