ELEGIA N. 2
ALL'ITALIA! IN MODO NAPOLITANO

All'Italia! takes its title from the fourth movement of the Piano Concerto (there the title is All'Italiana), although the material used does not come only from that movement. Indeed, the most striking effect of this Elegy - the superimposed major-minor arpeggios - comes from the second movement of the concerto, the section given as "in modo napolitano". Busoni uses the basic material purely as a starting point, there is no question here of arranging or even transcribing: the material is subjected to a new setting, as for instance, the glittering, exotic scales now combined with the Neapolitan melody. From the fourth movement of the concerto, Busoni addresses himself to the section subtitled "in tono populare", and builds the middle portion of the Elegy from it. A three-hand effect is achieved (not, of course, an invention of Busoni's) by the crossing of hands and, once more, the material is not taken from the concerto, but reworked. There is then a return to the pedalled major-minor effect, but in the last section of the Elegy Busoni also quotes a theme from the third movement.of the concerto in a soft and heavily pedalled version.
To understand this Elegy, one has to be familiar with the Piano Concerto. Busoni made very clear how he saw the connection between a number of the themes and movements; a disciple, too, would appreciate the transformation that had been wrought upon familiar material. To the uninitiated, some of the point of the exercise would have been lost; indeed, an outsider may well be puzzled at this sort of seemingly indiscriminate use of material from widely separated sections of the concerto. The ending of All'Italia! dissatisfied Busoni, and he devised an alternative, passed on to me by Egon Petri, written down for the first time here. There is an "in" joke that Busoni perpetrated in this piece. Harmonically, the Elegy basically consists of a tug-of-war between the tonal centers B or B flat and F sharp. B and F are Busoni's initials. Petri pointed this out to me, and it would be precisely the sort of hidden jest that Busoni would find amusing, and that only his close associates would be told about. [Sitsky, 62-63]