 Following a series of concerts in Northern Italy in Spring 1913, Busoni was offered the directorship of the Liceo Rossini in Bologna. He had recently moved to an apartment in Viktoria-Luise-Platz in Schöneberg, Berlin, but took up the offer, intending to spend his summers in Berlin. The posting proved not to be a success. Bologna was a cultural backwater, despite occasional visits from celebrities such as Isadora Duncan. Busoni's piano pupils were untalented, and he had constant arguments with the local authorities. After the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, he asked for a year of absence to play an American tour; in fact he was never to return. Virtually his sole permanent achievement at the school was to have modernized its sanitary facilities. He had however during this time composed another concertante work for piano and orchestra, the Indian Fantasy. The piece is based on melodies and rhythms from various American Indian tribes; Busoni derived them from a book he had received from his former pupil, the ethnomusicologist Natalie Curtis Burlin during his 1910 tour of the USA. The work was premiered with Busoni as soloist in March 1914 in Berlin.
