Ferruccio Busoni began his career as a child prodigy, studying piano and composition at the Vienna Conservatory at the age of nine. As a composer, he initially dedicated himself to the traditions of Schumann, Chopin and Mendelssohn, but soon went on to create works that used extended tonality, and sometimes a bitonal approach. Busoni regarded his monumental Piano Concerto neither in the style of the brilliant virtuoso concertos, nor in that of the symphonic concertos by Beethoven and Brahms. He rather aimed at a subtle intertwining of piano and orchestra, with the piano hardly ever presenting a theme in its original form, but mostly decorating and transforming the material introduced by the orchestra.