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Ferrucio Busoni intl. Piano Competition

WFIMC Café: Yifan Wu

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Competitions

Winner of the 2025 Busoni Competition, the young pianist explains how his love for improvisation, analytical mind and award-winning photography shape his unique artistic voice

WFIMC: Two months after the Busoni Competition- what is your first memory that comes to mind? What is your most striking memory from that time?

Yifan Wu: I came to Bolzano with no expectations, so it was really quite unexpected for me to receive a prize. I improvised in the second round and did many unorthodox things, so I didn´t expect to advance. But fortunately, some people must have liked my playing. The most striking moment? When they announced the names! It was a very special moment.

What was the reason for you to choose the Busoni Competition? Why not the Chopin or the Queen Elisabeth? This is the piano competition year, all the big competitions are happening one after the other…

Well, personally, I never played any Chopin. I am not a fan of his music, so the Chopin Competition was out of the question. I chose Busoni because if its very diverse repertoire. There is a lot of freedom, and, as I said, you can do a rather unorthodox program. I also like Busoni himself very much. He is not only a pianist- he is also a composer and a true artist.
And lastly, they require a contemporary piece. Bolzano is very demanding, but it allows you to present your own programs. At the Chopin, you can only play Chopin. At the Queen Elisabeth, first of all you have to play four Etudes…

How do you work out your programs? For someone who is not a pianist, the pieces of your recital program (Charlotte Bray, Beethoven, Bach and Schumann) didn't seem connected at first glance, except maybe for the Bach. But after reading about them, I found it fascinating how they are linked by a common idea, the composers' ages, or their unusual structures. How do you go about putting a program like this together?

It was really a coincidence. For this round, the competition required a Busoni-Bach transcription and one classical sonata, plus the Charlotte Bray piece; the rest was our choice. I had decided to play the Schumann Sonata as the main work. I had 25 minutes left, and I just put the three other pieces in order randomly. It wasn't until one week before the competition that I discovered they have very smooth transitions between them. I didn't have to improvise or do anything special. I started with Beethoven, and that piece ends on the same note that the Charlotte Bray begins with. Then the Bray ends with a pianissimo, and the Bach/Busoni Choral just emerges from it. The whole program fits together very well and builds its own narrative.

Yifan Wu performing with the Haydn Orchestra Bolzano at the finals of the 2025 Busoni Competition

So it was not really planned at all?

Right. It just happened out of coincidence. In a way, ideas like that just “emerge” from your life. They just happen.

Did you discuss this with anyone, or you just decided to do it that way?

I just decided. I believe that creative programming is very important. It’s like the business card of an artist. If a program is interesting, maybe more people will come to your concert.

But creative programming is hard to plan- it’s the process, or the inspiration of a certain moment that makes ideas happen. When you have a recital in two years, you have to plan long in advance.

Realistically, I have to decide programs because promoters need them. But creative programming is always part of my performances, especially with smaller, miniature pieces. Taken out of context, they may mean nothing, but putting them together in a creative way, you can create a completely new narrative. 
Of course, this doesn't work for a whole recital. I will decide on a main program—a big piece, a long sonata, or even something like three Mozart sonatas for one half. That part is very specific. But what follows, the rest of the concert, is more flexible. I will see which piece fits the concept or the story of a certain program, and decide later what to do with it.

Do you ever get tired of certain pieces? You now have 30 or 40 concerts lined up after winning the competition. Are you doing various programs, or are you playing the same pieces over and over?

For this season, I'm not changing programs. Some promoters ask for specific Beethoven Sonatas, and I'll do that if it's their request. Otherwise, I will keep the same program. I want to maintain consistency, but my interpretations and my mood in every concert will be very, very different. It’s my principle that every concert must be unique. Two concerts cannot be the same.

Are there times when you feel like you just cannot get into the right mood? What do you do to become “creative”?

I improvise.

You mean, you improvise in the middle of a composition?

I improvise between pieces, or even within a certain piece. It changes my mind and brings in fresh ideas, because your thoughts and reactions are different every time. A sonata is a very big structure, and of course, that structure is settled. But there are always parts—I call it “interpretative improvisation”—that I do differently in every concert. Without violating the larger structure, it helps maintain a certain spontaneity and a fresh mind.

Do you have a “recipe” to get into that mood when you go on stage? If you’re having a bad day, if you have other things on your mind, or if are worried about something, what is your remedy?

I will ask the audience. I ask the audience to give me just three random notes, and I will improvise on them for one or two minutes. It’s a kind of warm-up for my mind. A less unorthodox way is to open with Scarlatti, or with small pieces that allow for a lot of interpretive space. Once I get into the mood with these small pieces, it will be much easier to perform a big sonata. We always need an “entry” into a program.

A photograph from Yifan Wu's series "City Circuits"

You have won awards not only for your piano playing, but also for your photography. In 2022 you were named “non-professional architecture photographer of the year” at the International Photography Awards (IPA).

I was always fascinated by the cityscape of my hometown Shanghai, and had previously been awarded for my work “The Window of Shanghai”. But in 2022, owing to the outbreak of the epidemic in Shanghai, I was forced to stay at home, which gave me a perfect opportunity to reexamine my work. Then I began to use a drone to shoot top-down views of Shanghai skyscrapers, and I was surprised how the structures deeply attracted me. They have some stunning similarities to silicon chips in micro-photography. This gave me the idea for a series called “City Circuits”, to explore the close connection between urbanization and integration.

Is your photography linked to your piano playing? Are there common ideas?

Yes, I think there are some connections, even if they are not very obvious. The rooftop pictures from “City Circuits” are like drawings. We place similar things in the same background to objectively observe the differences and nuances in these structures, which is a very traditional approach in artistic photography. I am always obsessed with that objectivity- which is quite different from my playing, which is not objective at all. But I am also very interested in musicology, especially in analysis and structures. So for me, objectivity and subjectivity blend to form an artistic idea. We cannot always be free- in music, we need rules and structures that cannot be changed. Photography helps me see these structures in a very objective way, which in turn gives me room for artistic freedom.

Yifan Wu

Looking at the photography, I wanted to ask you: do you have a photographic memory? 

No, I don´t. I analyse. I always rely on analysis. Just like Murray Perahia, he comes to a masterclass with his analysis graph. He said that without drawing that graph, he couldn’t do a masterclass. I am the same- I always have a graph for every piece I play, to decide what is important and what is not.

What are your plans for the coming year? Any big projects you are working on?

This year, I will mainly focus on Mozart. I just started to learn two Mozart concertos- No. 19 and No. 24. Also, I am learning four or five Mozart sonatas, which I will perform together with sonatas by Johann Christian Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. The sons of Bach directly influenced Mozart’s early style, so I am planning concerts dedicated to Mozart- beginning with the Bachs, some early Mozart, and continuing on to late Mozart.

Also, I am working on Hindemith- I really like him. In a few years, I would like to premiere his “Ludus Tonalis” in China, as well as his piano concertos, which have never been performed in my country. But these are very rarely performed pieces. I am a big fan of Hindemith, but this will take time. You need a lot of time to study this composer.

You just graduated from high school- where will you go next?

I am now in Shanghai finalizing some paperwork, but I will be back in Madrid soon, where I will study at the Reina Sofia School of Music with Stanislav Ioudenitch.

 

©WFIMC2025/FR
Photos ©Busoni-Mahler Foundation, Bolzano, ©ipa