Beginning of the competition

The „Ferruccio Busoni" International Piano Contest was started in 1949 by Cesare Nordio, who was at that time the director of the "C. Monteverdi" Conservatory of Bolzano, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Busoni's passing away.
Nordio's main aim in this was to create an international piano contest that would bring great prestige to both Bolzano and its Conservatory. Cesare Nordio had acquired great experience in this field, having been a member of the panel of judges of the International Contest in Vienna in 1933 and 1936, when Emil Gilels and Dinu Lipatti had won second place.
In 1938 he was president of the judges' committee of that contest, along with exceptional jurors such as Claudio Arrau, Wilhelm Backhaus, Alfredo Casella, Edwin Fischer, Ignaz Friedemann, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Walther Gieseking, Myra Hess, Wanda Landowska, Emil vom Sauer, Sergei Rachmaninoff and many others. In Bolzano in those post-war years, in a region where two cultures met in stimulating contrast to one another, there was the desire to create a sort of musical bridge between the Italian and the German cultures, thus honouring the role and the influence that Ferruccio Busoni, as an Italian artist, enjoyed in Germany at the beginning of the century.
Thus the contest began on the 12th of September 1949. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli himself took part enthusiastically, donating a remarkable sum of money for the second prize and taking part in the first juries. The contest immediately drew the attention of the entire musical world of the time, partly because Nordio was able to involve the greatest names on the international concert circuit. On the Honours Committee were Claudio Arrau, Wilhelm Backhaus, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Alexander Borowski, Robert Casadesus, Alfred Cortot, Eduardo Del Pueyo, Edwin Fischer, Walther Gieseking, Josè Iturbi, Dinu Lipatti, Nikolai Orloff, Egon Petri, Arthur Rubinstein, Rudolf Serkin, Gino Tagliapietra, Carlo Zecchi. Petri, Tagliapietra and Zecchi had been Busoni's students. Busoni's wife, Gerda, sent a heartfelt letter of support and thanks. For a few years the first prize was not awarded. In the first year of the contest, in 1949, Alfred Brendel received an honourable fourth place. In 1952 the Roman pianist Sergio Perticaroli won the Premio Busoni, followed by Ella Goldstein in 1953 and Aldo Mancinelli in 1954. For a few years a contest in piano composition also took place.
In 1956, when Jörg Demus won the Premio Busoni, the composition contest was won by the Englishman Kenneth Leighton (winner of the 2nd prize: Bruno Bettinelli). Maurizio Pollini, who was barely fourteen at the time, took Giorgio Vidusso's place at the last minute and his performance of the difficult pieces selected by the jury was highly impressive. Pollini not only had no difficulty, he actually played some of the compositions from memory. The year after he was invited by the Concert Society of Bolzano, where he presented all of Chopin's Etudes. In 1957 the Premio Busoni was awarded to the sixteen-year-old Martha Argerich, and since then many famous international pianists have taken part in the Busoni contest: from Garrick Ohlsson to Ingrid Häbler, from Walther Klien to Louis Lortie, from John Ogdon to Lilia Zilberstein. We shall not name them all here, but rather list them in the Roll of Honour that follows: they are the true history of our contest.