A Little Look into the Chamber Fantasy on Bizet's "Carmen" for piano solo by Busoni

A lot of operatic transcriptions on "Carmen" had been done but this one by Ferruccio Busoni seems to be a less obvious transcription performed nowadays. Still this transcription works. Here is a bit of what happens inside a few of these sections.

 PART 2 (mm. 82-101) Here, the Act II flower song is depicted, where Don José says to Carmen that this symbol represents the desire for love, although Carmen remains indifferent to his wishes. The contemporary accompaniment seems to make the aria more of an hallucination then a straight-forward faithful transcription. A transitional section based on the famous fate motive appears on mm. 102-109, leading to a V7 of D-flat key center.

 PART 3 (mm. 110-186) This time, the part brings out the Habanera aria sung by Carmen in Act 2, who sings that falling in love with a man may bring with it danger. The key starts in Db major, and then comes back to the original D minor (m. 135), where there is a flourishing figuration of the motive. Another transition-filled passage depicts the Act 4 quarrel when Don José and Carmen that grows into a climax, just before Carmen gets stabbed (mm. 169-186), which leads to the V7 of A by running scales.