Ferruccio Busoni
1866 - 1924
Ferruccio Busoni was a German composer and pianist born in Italy. At the age of 7 he made his first public appearance and at 12 he conducted his own Stabat Mater.
He taught in Helsinki, Moscow and Boston before settling permanently in Berlin in 1894. He became famous as a virtuoso pianist and gave world premieres of works by important composers.
His most famous work during his lifetime, the opera Die Brautwahl (1910), was followed by the operas Arlecchino (1916) and Turandot (1917), but the unfinished and posthumously staged Doctor Faust is considered his masterpiece.
Of his orchestral works, his Piano Concerto (1904) is the most frequently performed. His numerous piano pieces include the Fantasia contrappuntistica (1910), six sonatinas (1910-20) and arrangements of organ works by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Erik Satie
1866 - 1925
Franz Liszt
1811 - 1886
The Hungarian composer Franz Liszt was an important figure in romantic music and was celebrated as Europe's greatest pianist during his lifetime.
As a child he played for the audience, studied in Vienna and Paris and became an interpreter whose presence and dramatic play made him an international stage star. In 1848 he went to Weimar, where he became the musical center of Germany through his teaching, composing and performing activities.
It is said that Liszt taught most of the greatest pianists of the next generation. He wrote several piano pieces and was known for a distinctive, sometimes experimental style.
His program music included so-called "symphonic poems" (eg Les Preludes from 1856) and his interest in gypsy culture influenced his many Hungarian rhapsodies.
As he got older, he became more and more religious, and in the 1860s he received medals from the Catholic Church (he was known as the Abbé). Liszt was also linked to two married women during his career, Countess Marie d'Aguoult in the late 1830s and Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein after 1847.