Busoni’s transcriptions of Bach have long been one of the mainstays of the piano repertoire. Bach himself worshipped the music of the Danish- (or Swedish-) born Dieterich Buxtehude (1637–1707), famously walking 250 miles to Lübeck to hear him play. The Liszt student August Stradal (1860–1930) obviously shared that admiration, transcribing ten of Buxtehude’s most imposing organ works for piano, thus creating alongside ‘Bach-Busoni’ a corpus of grandiose – and virtuoso – Baroque music for the modern concert grand that has somehow remained almost entirely unknown.

Meilin Ai studied for her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance with Joseph Banowetz at the University of North Texas and is now a full-time faculty member of the Conservatory of Music of the Sichuan Normal University in China.