Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni was BOTD in 1866. Born in Empoli, Tuscany to musician parents, he was raised in Trieste. A child musical prodigy, he made his professional debut as a piano soloist at seven. Admitted to the Vienna Conservatory when he was nine, his concert performances were well-received, and he began composing concertos and string quartets. At 15, he was elected to the Academia Filharmonica of Bologna – the youngest person to receive this honour since Mozart – and befriended fellow composers Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms and Jean Sibelius. After teaching in Europe and the United States, he settled in Berlin, devoting himself to composing, touring and teaching. His best known works from his Berlin years followed German traditions, including well-regarded piano transcriptions of Bach’s keyboard music. After attending the premiere of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Falstaff in 1893, he returned to Italian music, composing the Piano Concerto in C major, solo piano pieces and two short operas based on Italian commedia dell’arte traditions. During World War One, divided in his loyalty between Italy and Germany, he settled in Switzerland, befriending writers Stefan Zweig and James Joyce and the dancer Isadora Duncan. He returned to Germany after the war, where his students included Kurt Weill and Igor Stravinsky. He married Gerda Sjöstrand in 1889, with whom he had two sons. Discreetly bisexual, he had a long-term affair with Futurist painter Umberto Boccioni until Boccioni’s sudden death in 1916. Busoni died in 1924, aged 58. Widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century, the Busoni International Piano Competition was created in 1949 in his honour.