Busoni, Ferruccio

(1866-1924)

   pianist and composer; his famous pupils included Paul Hindemith,* Kurt Weill,* and Percy Grainger. Born in Empoli (near Florence) to a clarinettist, he was deemed a child prodigy at age four; at eight he gave his first recital in Triest. In 1881, at fifteen, he was named to Italy's Reale Accademia filarmonica. Brahms recommended him to Carl Rei-necke in Leipzig, where, with his interpretations of Grieg, he gained consider-able notice. He composed two string quartets in Leipzig and began transcribing some of Bach's organ works for piano.

   Awarded Moscow's Rubinstein Prize in 1890, Busoni was internationally re-nowned when he moved to Berlin* in 1894. Excepting tours and a war-induced retreat to Switzerland, he remained in Berlin for the next thirty years. From 1902 his concerts of new music with the Berlin Philharmonic—he premiered the works of Arnold Schoenberg*—became famous. Moreover, as composer of controversial instrumental works and operas, he earned a place among the pio-neers of modern music. Although his chief compositions highlight the piano, his operatic works, especially Turandot and Doktor Faust (completed posthumously by a friend), are precursors to the musical theater* that blossomed under Weill and Bertolt Brecht.* In his last years (1921-1924) he taught the compo-sition master class for the Prussian Academy of Arts.

   REFERENCES:NDB, vol. 3; New Grove, vol. 3; Schebera, Kurt Weill.