Busoni supported his ménage as a pianist—in an age of keyboard titans, the pre-eminent pianist after Liszt—though his originality, dignity, and absence of charlatanism never won him the popularity of a Paderewski, or even of the eccentric "Chopinzee," Vladimir de Pachmann. Music as business he loathed—he accepted no remuneration for teaching. His most caustic comments were reserved for his agents, one of whom outraged him by suggesting that he fake an auto accident to spark publicity. To maintain his lordly lifestyle, and selfless generosity to struggling artists, Busoni was obliged to undertake extensive tours from Moscow to San Francisco, including stops in provincial backwaters such as Des Moines, from which he writes to his wife on March 29, 1910, "...the concert yesterday was very satisfactory—full house, a feeling of excitement and enthusiastic criticisms. The heat had reached the highest point for the year. I was dead tired. But a beautiful piano, good acoustics, and the feeling of great expectation in the hall hypnotized me for the two hours I was on the platform. From the standpoint of a thinking artist, no longer young, it was an unforgivable waste of strength, time and thought, which can never be recovered, in order to make a momentary impression on a small number of insignificant people." As Bernard van Dieren noted, "Busoni had a terrifying uphill struggle all the time." With malicious glee, Ernst Krenek recalled an open house at Busoni's—"Coffee was served regularly, but once we were given Sekt, which had not been paid for; even as we were drinking it the merchant pounded on the door asking for his money." This is reminiscent of the scene in Doktor Faust where creditors are heard at Faust's door—he commands Mephistopheles to "Kill them." Throughout the Great War, Busoni resided in Zürich, refusing to perform in the belligerent nations. His drastically curtailed performance career led to difficulties, partially relieved when he was befriended by a banker and amateur flutist, Albert Biolley, who arranged loans and gifts. Busoni composed and dedicated the Albumleaf for flute and piano to him in autumn 1916, though he found it too expressively potent—with its stately air of foreboding becoming more floridly effusive—to leave in that modest form and adapted it as an aria in his comic opera Turandot (1916-1917), arranged it as part of the concluding number of his Turandot Suite, and transcribed it for piano as the first of his Drei Albumblätter.

© Adrian Corleonis, All Music Guide