Piano & Co: Busoni Prizewinners' Concert

The pianist Arsenii Mun, born in St. Petersburg in 1999, currently living in New York and already touring successfully worldwide, has not only won the Busoni Competition, but also enjoys playing works by his namesake, Ferruccio Busoni. The German-Italian, composer, theorist of "new music" beyond Schönberg and world-class pianist, particularly loved the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, which for him was "part of the vibrating universe". His arrangements of chorales and the great Fantasia bear eloquent testimony to this. Frédéric Chopin and Modest Mussorgsky, both romantics and visionaries of modernism, had also studied their Bach. The Pole extracted wondrous piano pieces such as the Mazurkas from the dances of his lost homeland, but also wrote a Barcarolle from Veneto with the greatest refinement. With his Pictures at an Exhibition, the Russian created the first major piano cycle of "New Music" at a time when it did not even exist.