Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, and writer on music active from the late Romantic into the early modernist period, born in Empoli and working successively in Helsinki, Moscow, Boston, and, from 1894, Berlin, his primary base, with a period in Switzerland during the First World War. A celebrated virtuoso pianist known for extensive Bach editions and transcriptions, he also composed piano and orchestral works, chamber music, and operas, including the unfinished Doktor Faust left incomplete at his death. He died in Berlin in July 1924, officially of heart failure, with inflamed kidneys and overwork also cited as contributing factors.

Busoni’s interpretive philosophy, emphasizing artistic freedom over literal adherence to the score, and his 1907 treatise Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, helped point European music toward modernism and experimentation, including early explorations of atonality and microtonality. His most enduring influence came through teaching, with pupils such as Kurt Weill and Wladimir Vogel, and through his writings, and his legacy is commemorated today in the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition, established in 1949.

Compare recordings piece by piece — 2 works of Ferruccio Busoni with more than one performance on the site →

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferruccio_Busoni