42. Max Oppenheimer (MOPP)
(1885-1954)
Ferruccio Busoni am Klavier

(click on image to print)
Oppenheimer, Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio Busoni am Klavier

Drypoint, 1916, Pabst 37, 278 x 278 mm., ex collection: unidentified stamp. Fine impression with light plate tone on thick, white wove paper with full margins, signed in pencil MOPP, and from the total edition of 100; light rippling of the paper at the right. Pabst, and Stix before him, say that the edition was of 25 impressions on japan and 75 on bütten ( laid paper), but the two impressions we have seen, one of them a trial proof, have both been on thick wove paper and it is likely that the printing of 75 was on this paper rather than laid. There is a painting by Oppenheimer related to this print. Busoni (1866-1924) was an eminent Italian composer and conductor, in many ways ahead of his time, and an active promoter of contemporary music. He was also a great, if often controversial, pianist and well known for his piano transcriptions of works by J. S. Bach, many of which are part and parcel of today’s pianists’ standard repertoire. Although a good likeness, Oppenheimer’s portrait is clearly a work of its time, the subject’s hair transformed into abstract patterns and the fingers expressionistically exaggerated.