The circumstances that led to my intimate connection with Busoni’s Concerto were somewhat unusual. It was the other way round in our cause: it was the executant who was trying to convince the composer of the worth-whileness of his work! / Busoni in those days, mature, aloof, objective toward his own work as toward everything else, had already gone beyond that stage of development which had produced the Violin Concerto. One Sunday morning in (perhaps) 1912 I played it [Busoni’s Violin Concerto] in Maud Allan’s beautiful studio in Regent’s Park, where he was staying at that time; and it was with a half-indulgent, half-proud, “paternal” smile that he welcomed back his own neglected brain-child with the words: “Well, I must admit it’s a good work though unpretentious!” << less