There are not many composers of Sylvano Bussotti’s generation – by generation we mean a poetic more than numerical fact – for whom the piano has represented the, or an, authentic centre: a specific place for the invention and production of sounds which radiates towards other ideas, other fields of application.

Despite not being a composer-pianist, or a musician linked to a craft by means of the keyboard, at the end of the 1950s Bussotti succeeded, like Cage, Boulez and Feldman, in defining authoritatively a contemporary language of the piano which is at the same time idiomatic, experimental and imbued with history. The presence of the piano in Bussotti’s extensive catalogue is not only frequent, but also indicative of innovation, of turning points, sometimes even of ‘manifesto’; it is also not only the fruit of composition but also the living presence of the composer as a skilled and charismatic performer.