Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany 2009
In his fantastic solo concert, the American pianist Dan Franklin Smith revealed Busoni.
TRANSCENDENCE OF THE WORLD
Fantastic Piano Concert by Dan Franklin Smith
A more appropriate choice than Busoni’s Prelude and Chorale for piano could not have been found for this year’s Elysium Festival. War and oppression during the Third Reich stood as the centerpiece of the 6th Annual Culture Festival in Bernried. The music of the German-Italian composer was most suitable for this darkest chapter in German history. Busoni was a teacher and mentor to countless musicians who were forced to flee during the Nazi era. With his avant-garde compositions, he was the forerunner of artists who would later be portrayed as without merit and defamed as sick.
In his fantastic solo concert, the American pianist Dan Franklin Smith revealed what an aesthete, progressive thinker and scholar Busoni was. The opening Five Preludes demonstrated Busoni’s interest in rhythm and chromatics, and created the direction for the afternoon.
With obvious joy in rhythm, Smith followed Busoni’s lead in the Bach-inspired organ prelude as well as in the Berceuse, with its frequently painful tonality of modern music. Much of what one has heard from Schoenberg to Weill suddenly became clear to the listener. Here is someone whose pieces combine the complexity and transcendence of the world in their musicality. To complete the evening, happiness and hope abounded in Dan Franklin Smith’s interpretation of Busoni’s fantastic Chorale from Turandot.
—Armin Rouka, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Bernried, Germany, 2009