A hugely influential and multifaceted artist, Busoni was for many an intimidating intellectual figure whose varied talents aroused bewildered awe. Although he made only a handful of recordings, he was one of the most esteemed pianists of his time, as well as an important teacher and a master of the art of piano transcription. For years these accomplishments obscured his lasting achievements as a startlingly original composer. Born in 1866 in Empoli, near Florence, of mixed Italian and German heritage, Busoni was a child prodigy who composed with a fluency matched by his piano playing. He settled in Berlin in 1894, and championed Liszt and Alkan alongside playing core piano repertoire. However, he remains most associated with Bach, as a result of his creative engagement as editor (of, among other things, The Well-Tempered Clavier), arranger (his ever-popular piano transcriptions of Bach’s organ works) and original composer (his Fantasia contrappuntistica of 1910 is an extended development of Bach’s Art of Fugue). His large and varied output includes two published violin sonatas (1889, 1900); a Violin Concerto (1897); a mammoth Piano Concerto (1904) in five movements, lasting more than 70 minutes with a (male) choral finale; and four operas, culminating in the visionary Doktor Faust, which was not quite complete when Busoni died in 1924.