The Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition is a music competition for young pianists that takes place in Bolzano, Italy. It was founded in 1949 by Cesare Nordio in memory of the pianist and composer Ferruccio Busoni.
The first Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition was organized by Cesare Nordio in 1949 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the death of the pianist and composer. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli was a supporter of the competition and was a member of the inaugural jury. Alfred Brendel won the 4th prize in this competition. For a few years a piano composition competition took place together with the piano competition.[1]
In 1956, the young Maurizio Pollini took part in the competition, performing the Fantasia Contrappuntistica by Kenneth Leighton, which won the prize for composition; in 1957 Martha Argerich won the first prize. Other prize winners include Bruno Canino, Agustin Anievas, Joaquín Achúcarro, Jerome Rose, Garrick Ohlsson, Alberto Nosè and Wu Muye.[2]
Members of the jury have included: Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Nikita Magaloff, Igor Markevitch, Carlo Maria Giulini, Garrick Ohlsson, Bruno Canino, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Paul Badura-Skoda, Rafael Orozco, Joaquín Soriano, Gerhard Oppitz, Abdel Rahman El Bacha, Michele Campanella, Leif Ove Andsnes, Adam Harasiewicz, Hiroko Nakamura, Martha Argerich, Andrzej Jasiński, Lilya Zilberstein, Tadeusz Żmudziński, Valery Afanassiev and Eliso Virsaladze.[3]
Complete list of winners:
| 1949 |  | Rossana Orlandini 4th prize:  Alfred Brendel | ||
| 1950 | Karl-Heinz Schlüter |  Jacques Coulaud | ||
| 1951 |  Karl Engel and Walter Klien | |||
| 1952 | Sergio Perticaroli |  Andrzej Wasowski | Marisa Candeloro and Agostino Orizio | |
| 1953 |  Ella Goldstein | Monte Hill Davis |  Esteban Sanchez Herrero | |
| 1954 | Aldo Mancinelli | Gabriel Tacchino | Günter Ludwig | |
| 1955 | Germaine Devéze | Günter Ludwig | ||
| 1956 | Jörg Demus | Ivan Davis | James Mathis. 4th prize: Bruno Canino and Michael Ponti | |
| 1957 |  Martha Argerich | Ivan Davis and Jerome Lowenthal | Jeaneane Dowis | |
| 1958 |  José Kahan | Fabio Peressoni and Michael Ponti 4th prize: Bruno Canino | ||
| 1959 | Cécile Ousset and John Perry |  Imre Antal and Leonhard Hokanson4th prize: Joaquín Achúcarro | ||
| 1960 | Agustin Anievas and James Mathis | Imre Antal | ||
| 1961 | Jerome Rose | Norma Fisher and Howard Aibel | Dubravka Tomšič Srebotnjak | |
| 1962 |  Brenton Dale Bartlett | Iván Erőd and  Reynaldo Reyes | ||
| 1963 | Gernot Kahl | José Maria Contreras | ||
| 1964 | Michael Ponti | François-Joël Thiollier |  Ivan Drenikov | |
| 1965 | Bojidar Noev | James Dick | ||
| 1966 | Garrick Ohlsson | Richard Goode | ||
| 1967 | Ivan Klánský | Pietro Maranca | ||
| 1968 | Vladimir Selivochin | Mark Zeltser | Benedikt Köhlen and Craig Sheppard | |
| 1969 | Ursula Oppens | Annamaria Cigoli |  Akiko Kitagawa | |
| 1970 | Selection prize: Maria Luisa Lopez-Vito | |||
| 1971 | Nina Tichman |  Ilan Rogoff and Marioara Trifan | ||
| 1972 |  Arnaldo Cohen | Peter Bithell and David Oei | ||
| 1973 | Roland Keller and Andrzej Ratusiński | Elza Kolodin | ||
| 1974 | Robert Benz | Pascal Devoyon | Diane Walsh | |
| 1975 |  Staffan Scheja | Laszlo Simon and Terence Judd | ||
| 1976 | Roberto Cappello | Daniel Rivera | Susan Ann Howes and Adrienne Shannon | |
| 1977 | Ayami Ikeba and Véronique Roux |  Joop Celis and Kyoto Ito | ||
| 1978 | Boris Bloch |  Dennis Lee | Arnulf von Arnim 4th prize: Josep Colom | |
| 1979 | Catherine Vickers | Alyce Le Blanc | ||
| 1980 | Ruriko Kikuchi, Rolf Plagge and Hai-Kyung Suh | |||
| 1981 | Margarita Höhenrieder | Lev Natochenny | Boyan Vodenitcharov | |
| 1982 | Hung-Kuan Chen | Daniel Blumenthal and Yukino Fujiwara | ||
| 1983 | Robert McDonald | Frederick Blum and Arthur Greene | ||
| 1984 | Louis Lortie | Matthias Fletzberger | Bernd Glemser | |
| 1985 | José Carlos Cocarelli | Uriel Tsachor and Akira Wakabayashi | Natalia Vlassenko | |
| 1986 | Benjamin Frith and Pedrag Muzijevic | R. Clipper Erickson and Igor Kamenz | ||
| 1987 | Lilya Zilberstein | Valery Kuleshof |  Ian Munro and  Alfredo Perl | |
| 1988 | Igor Kamenz and Benjamin Pasternack | Fabio Bidini | ||
| 1989 | Aleksandar Madžar | Francesco Cipolletta and Valery Grohovsky | ||
| 1990 | Karina Yavlenskaya | Midori Nohara | ||
| 1991 | Olivier Cazal and  Igor Kamenz | Stanislav Judenich | ||
| 1992 |  Anna Kravtchenko | Fabio Bidini | Mark Anderson and  Sergei Babayan | |
| 1993 | Roberto Cominati | Vitaly Samoschko | Olivier Cazal | |
| 1994 |  Mzia Simonishwili | Iwao Murakami | Corrado Rollero | |
| 1995 | Alexander Shtarkman | Sergei Tarasov | ||
| 1996 | Jan Gottlieb Jiracek | Michael Dantschenko | ||
| 1997 | Yoon-Soo Lee | Dimitri Vorobieff | ||
| 1998 | Olaf John Laneri | Catherine Chi | ||
| 1999 | Alexander Kobrin | Alberto Nosè | Min-Soo Sohn | |
| 2000 | Ayako Kimura and Carl Wolf | |||
| 2001 | Alexander Romanovsky | Hea-Jung Cho | Dong-Min Lim | |
| 2003 | Maria Stembolskaia | |||
| 2004/2005 | Giuseppe Andaloro | Mariangela Vacatello | Hye-Jin Kim | |
| 2006/2007 | Matthew Ward | Sofya Gulyak and Dinara Nadzhafova | Lilian Akopova | |
| 2008/2009 | Michail Lifits | Alexey Lebedev | Gesualdo Coggi | |
| 2010/2011 | Anna Bulkina and Antonii Barishevskyi | Tatiana Chernichka | ||
| 2012/2013 | Rodolfo Leone | Akihiro Sakiya and Dmitry Shishkin | ||
| 2014/2015 | Ji-Yeong Mun | Alberto Ferro | Roman Lopatynskyi | |
| 2016/2017 |  | Jae-Yeon Won | Anna Geniushene | |
| 2018/2019 | Emanuil Ivanov | Shiori Kuwahara | Giorgi Gigashvili | |
| 2021 | Jae Hong Park | Do-Hyun Kim | Lukas Sternath | |
| 2023 | Arsenii Mun | Anthony Ratinov | Ryota Yamazaki | |