Moritz Moszkowski

The boy from Breslau

Moszkowski was born in 1854 in Breslau, then a Prussian city and today Wrocław in Poland, into a well-off Polish-Jewish family. Gifted at the piano from early on, he studied in Dresden and then moved to Berlin, where he learned piano and composition at a music school.

The Berlin teacher

After his studies Moszkowski taught for many years at the same Berlin school where he had learned. He also performed as a pianist and conducted. Among his students was Wanda Landowska, who later became known for bringing the harpsichord back to life. He was a capable violinist as well, and it is said he sometimes played the violin in orchestras.

The Spanish Dances

What made Moszkowski's name widely known was his set of Spanish Dances for piano four hands. Played by two people side by side at one piano, they were perfect for family and friends to enjoy together at home. In an age when a piano stood in so many parlors, his music sold briskly as sheet music. He also wrote works for various instruments and orchestra, and even an opera, but what people most often picked up were his piano pieces.

A connection to the Chaminade family

In 1884 he married Henriette Chaminade, younger sister of the French composer Cécile Chaminade. The marriage did not last and ended in the early 1890s. In 1892 his opera Boabdil, about the last Moorish king of Granada, was staged in Berlin, so his interest in Spain carried over from dances to opera.

To Paris

In 1897 Moszkowski moved to Paris. Comfortably off, he settled there and taught the students who came to him. It is said that the English conductor Thomas Beecham learned orchestration from him. His études were widely used by piano students to polish their fingers.

A lost fortune

Then the First World War changed everything. He had put his savings into German, Polish and Russian securities, and the war wiped out their value. As new kinds of music came into fashion, fewer people asked for his pieces. When he also fell ill, pianists in New York held a concert in 1924 and raised a large sum to help him, but he died in Paris in March of the following year, 1925.

Music to hear on Pyeongeum

• Étude in C majora short étude in which the right hand keeps up a sparkling figure without a break.
• Étude in A minorfrom the same collection, a piece colored by the darker shade of a minor key.

Both come from his Twenty Études, Op. 91. The two recordings on Pyeongeum were posted by the same person, so if you play them one after the other the difference between major and minor comes through clearly. They were written for finger practice, but as you listen, follow how he pushes a single motion through to the end while changing the harmony so that it never grows dull.

People around him

• Cécile Chaminadehis sister-in-law, a French composer and pianist.
• Wanda Landowskathe keyboard player who studied with him in Berlin.
• Thomas Beechamthe English conductor who learned orchestration from him in Paris.