Adolf von henselt biography

Adolf von Henselt (born Schwabach, Bavaria, May 9 1814; died Warmbrunn (now Cieplice), Silesia, October 10 1889) was a Germanpianist and composer. He had piano lessons from Hummel in Weimar. When he was a young man he played in concerts all over Germany. Then he went to Russia where he was very successful and he settled there to live. He became pianist at the court of the tsar and taught the tsar’s children how to play the piano.

Henselt was known for his beautiful playing of the music of Chopin. He was very good at playing widely spaced arpeggios and could make them sound very smooth (legato) even if he was not using the pedal.

As a composer he is mostly remembered today for a few of his short works which are often ganska sentimental, e.g. Frühlingslied (Spring Song) and Si oiseau j’étais (If I were a bird).

German composer and pianist

Georg Martin Adolf von Henselt (9 May 1814 – 10 October 1889) was a German composer and virtuosopianist.

Life

Henselt was born at Schwabach, in Bavaria. At the age of three he began to learn the violin, and at five the piano under Josepha von Fladt^[1] (1778–1843), who had trained in composition with Franz Danzi, Abbé (George Joseph) Vogler,^[2]Joseph Graetz and studied piano with Franz Lauska (who later coached Meyerbeer, Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn). His concert debut was at the Odeon in Munich, where he played the opening Allegro to one of Mozart's C major concertos, a free fantasy with variations on a theme from Weber's Der Freischütz, and a rondo by Kalkbrenner. It was through Flad's influence with King Ludwig I of Bavaria that Henselt was provided the financial means to undertake further study with Johann Nepomuk Hummel in Weimar in 1832 for some months. Later that year, he

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Biography

  

Adolf von Henselt (1814 – 1889)

The German composer and pianist, Adolf von Henselt, born in Schwabach, Bavaria, a few miles south of Nürnberg, occupies a firmly established place in the galaxy of six composers all born within the space of five years of one another between 1809 and 1814 – the eldest, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, followed by Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Thalberg and Henselt himself – together, they shaped the manner in which romantic piano music was to develop to the end of the century and beyond. This was the consummation of a golden age expressed through the medium of the fast developing grand piano.

The Henselt family moved from Schwabach to Munich when Henselt was three years old, at about which age he commenced his music studies, at first with violin and then with the piano. Progress was rapid, with a particular bent for the music of Carl von Weber (1786-1826). This bent, evident at such an early age, gathered gr