Ferruccio Busoni (1 April 1866 – 27 July 1924) (given names: Ferruccio Dante Michelangiolo Benvenuto) was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor, editor, writer, and teacher. His international career and reputation meant that he met and had close relations with many of the leading musicians, artists and literary figures of his time, and he was sought-after both as a keyboard instructor and a teacher of composition.

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Konzertstück [Concert Piece] Op. 31a, for piano and orchestra BV 236 (1889-June 1890)
Dedicated to Anton Rubinstein

Carlo Grante, piano and the I Pomeriggi Musicali, conducted by Marco Zuccarini

Description by Adrian Corleonis [-]
Busoni's chronicler, Antony Beaumont, stated bluntly, "It is with the Konzertstück that Busoni's career as a composer truly begins." By the time of its completion in June 1890, Busoni could look back on nearly 250 works, great and small, including two string quartets, a violin sonata, an opera (Sigune, which remained unpublished while furnishing material for several works, including the Konzertstück), and a Concert-Fantaisie for piano and orchestra. The latter, composed over 1888-1889 and playing nearly half an hour, affords a rare exhibition of the Sturm und Drang one expects from a 23-year-old artist destined to become a pianistic god and one of the prime makers of modernism, though it loses effect through unfocussed involvement. Busoni thought well enough of it to recompose it as a Symphonisches Tongedicht in 1893. By contrast, the Konzertstück is relatively straightforward and, given its attractive -- if unmemorable -- materials, effective, though hardly surefire. It is a masterpiece in the initial sense of demonstrating mastery of the bag of German compositional tools -- what the critic of the St. Petersburger Herold admired in it: "...fine working-out of themes, brilliant though somewhat noisy scoring, concise and clear form and fairly original piano writing." The formal balance and coolly calculating execution are the more remarkable in that the Konzertstück took shape during the period of Busoni's engagement to Gerda Sjöstrand, daughter of Swedish sculptor Carl Aeneas Sjöstrand, fraught with his parents' protracted opposition. While giving three recitals in St. Petersburg in April 1890, Busoni heard of a competition for piano and composition offered for the first time by Anton Rubinstein. Rubinstein was to cross Busoni's path, with magisterial impact, several times, especially after Busoni accepted a piano professorship at the Moscow Conservatoire in September 1890. He and Gerda were married in Moscow September 27, 1890. Busoni modeled his own "monumental" style of playing on Rubinstein's. Thus, there is some irony in the circumstance that Busoni was awarded the composition prize for the Konzertstück but denied the piano prize -- Rubinstein intervened to see that at least one of the prizes was awarded to a Russian, a certain Dubassov, who remained obscure. Busoni played the premiere of the Konzertstück at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire with the Orchestra of the Russian Musical Society on August 28, 1890. It was one of a handful of early works for which he retained affection and in 1921 he composed a Romanza e Scherzoso to round it off, making the Concertino for piano and orchestra, Op. 54.

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