Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio Busoni (1 April 1866, Empoli, Italy — 27 July 1924, Berlin, Weimar Republic) was a distinguished Italian composer, pianist, music editor, writer, and pedagogue. He was the son of clarinetist Ferdinando Busoni (1834—1909) and pianist Anna Weiß-Busoni (opens in a new tab) (1833—1909), and had two sons: Benvenuto "Benni" (opens in a new tab) (1892—1976) and Raffaello "Lello" Busoni (opens in a new tab) (1900—1962). The Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition, established in 1949 by Cesare Nordio to commemorate his 25th anniversary, is widely acclaimed among the world's most prestigious and challenging.
Busoni had an extensive and prolific career as a pianist and composer that spanned Europe, Russia, and the United States. During this time, he collaborated with some of the most notable musicians, artists, writers, and thinkers of the era. An outstanding pianist, Ferruccio was a child prodigy initially trained by his parents. Between 1875 and 1877, young Busoni studied at the Vienna Conservatory (opens in a new tab); as an adult, he trained under Carl Reinecke in Leipzig. Busoni settled in Berlin in 1894, which he henceforth regarded as his home base.
Ferruccio Busoni did acoustic piano recordings at, in November 1919 and February 1922, released by Columbia (opens in a new tab) on several 78 RPM shellac discs. In 2002, Arbiter label digitally restored surviving material for the CD compilation Busoni And His Legacy - Piano Recordings By Busoni · Ley · Petri (US 2002) (opens in a new tab).
He began writing music in early childhood and completed over 200 original pieces before turning twenty. Busoni's established "mature" catalog comprised over 100 works, from symphonic suites and concertos to solo piano, chamber pieces for piano and strings, string quartets, and many others. Perhaps even more recognized than Ferruccio's original oeuvre was his monumental "Bach-Busoni Editions" (J.S. Bach Klavierwerke: Busoni-Ausgabe) — a series of piano transcriptions of Bach (opens in a new tab)'s organ works. The colossal endeavor took him almost thirty years, even in co-authorship with Egon Petri and Bruno Mugellini (1871—1912); the first 25-volume edition was published by Breitkopf & Härtel between 1894 and 1923. Busoni also produced and published many adaptations, transcriptions, cadenzas, and editions of other composers, including Beethoven (opens in a new tab), Mozart (opens in a new tab), Liszt (opens in a new tab), Schubert (opens in a new tab), Brahms (opens in a new tab), Chopin (opens in a new tab), Mendelssohn (opens in a new tab), Weber (opens in a new tab), Cornelius (opens in a new tab), Cramer (opens in a new tab), and Goldmark (opens in a new tab).
Some of Busoni's notable composition and piano students over the years were Edgard Varèse, Egon Petri, Kurt Weill, Frederick Loewe, and Rudolph Ganz (co-founders of The Busoni Society), Aurelio Giorni, Stefan Wolpe, Otto Luening, Percy Grainger, Selim Palmgren, George Frederick Boyle, Armas Järnefelt, Edward Weiss, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Michael Von Zadora, Leo Sirota, Herbert Fryer, Elena Gnessina (opens in a new tab), Louis Gruenberg, Philipp Jarnach, Wladimir Vogel, Gino Tagliapietra, Edward Maurice Isaacs, Guido Agosti, Émile-Robert Blanchet, Alexander Brailowsky,, Ignaz Friedman,,,,, Eduard Steuermann, Theodor Szántó,, Beryl Rubinstein, Dimitri Tiomkin, Rudolph Ganz, Theophil Demetriescu, Gottfried Galston, and Robert Blum.