1814–1889
Adolf von Henselt (1814–1889) was a German pianist and composer who spent nearly forty years in Saint Petersburg as a court pianist, teacher, and inspector of musical studies. He was known for his finger-stretching technique and the soft, singing touch that his contemporaries admired. He left behind concert études and piano pieces.
Adolf von Henselt came into the world as Georg Martin Adolf Henselt in the Bavarian town of Schwabach on 9 May 1814; in Russia he became known as Adolf Lvovich Henselt. Three years later his family moved to Munich, where the boy first took up the violin and, two years after that, the piano.
Among those who also taught him piano was Anton Halm. It was the connections of Josepha von Fladt, a pupil of Franz Danzi and Abbé Vogler, at the Munich court that helped the young man secure a stipend: in 1832 King Ludwig I of Bavaria granted it to him, and it paid for eight months of lessons with Johann Nepomuk Hummel in Weimar.
Henselt's debut took place on 29 November 1832 at the Odeon concert hall in Munich. Its programme paired part of one of Mozart's concertos in C major with a free fantasy built on variations from Weber's overture to Der Freischütz and closed with a Kalkbrenner rondo, and the performance brought the young pianist considerable success. He then travelled to Vienna, where until 1834 he studied composition with Simon Sechter — later also the teacher of Anton Bruckner — while performing as a concert pianist in the city's halls.
Over the next four years Henselt undertook successful concert tours through the towns of Germany and Russia; the 1836 tour was made to improve his health. During it he met Frédéric Chopin in Karlovy Vary. A year later he married Rosalie Vogel, and in 1838 he settled in Saint Petersburg.
In 1838 Henselt became court pianist to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, and from 1857 general inspector of musical studies at Saint Petersburg's schools for young noblewomen, including the Smolny Institute. The post shaped the next forty years of his life in the capital, even though he gave up large concerts at thirty-five: his withdrawal from the stage has been linked to severe stage fright that at times bordered on obsession. In 1852, and again in 1867, he travelled to England, though on the second visit he made no public appearance.
Although he lived to seventy-five, Henselt had almost entirely stopped writing new music by about the age of thirty, for reasons that remain unclear.
Among his students — already during his German years — was Alfred Heinrich Ehrlich; later, in Russia, they were joined by Nikolai Zverev, Vladimir Stasov, and Nikolai Ber, through whom Henselt's influence spread across the Russian piano school that had grown from seeds planted by John Field. His students are also said to have included Ella Adayevskaya and Ingeborg Bronsart von Schellendorf. Sergei Rachmaninoff, too, later held his playing in high regard and counted him among his important influences.
From 1872 to 1875 Henselt edited the music journal Nouvellist. In 1876 he was granted noble rank. In 1887–1888 he taught as a professor at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, and at one point was second only to Anton Rubinstein in influence over the institution's direction.
Saint Petersburg remained Henselt's home almost until the end of his life, though he usually spent his summer holidays in Germany. Adolf von Henselt died of heart disease on 10 October 1889 at the spa town of Warmbrunn, now Cieplice Śląskie-Zdrój in Poland, where he had gone for treatment.
Contemporaries remembered Henselt's playing for its soft touch, flawless legato, and a particular skill for stretching the fingers across wide intervals. His performing repertoire included a great deal of Bach — among it The Well-Tempered Clavier — as well as music by Weber, Chopin, and Liszt; pianists such as Liszt himself and Robert Schumann singled out the quality of his touch on the keyboard.
As a composer, Henselt wrote mostly for piano and produced concert transcriptions of operatic and orchestral works, Russian folk songs, and music by Russian composers, among them M. I. Glinka, P. I. Tchaikovsky, A. S. Dargomyzhsky, and M. Y. Vielgorsky. His own list of works, though, is notably shorter than those of his contemporaries: he judged himself self-critically and did not rate himself highly as a composer.
Individual works include the Piano Concerto in F minor, Op. 16, once frequently performed in Europe; the Trio for piano with violin and cello, in A minor, Op. 24; and the Duet for piano with horn (or viola, or cello), in B minor, Op. 14. A special place in his output belongs to two cycles of études: the "Études caractéristiques", Op. 2 (12 pieces), and the "Salon Études", Op. 5 (12 more); together they make up 24 études in all keys. The best known piece from these cycles, later arranged by L. Godowsky, is No. 6 of Op. 2, known in the sources as "Si oiseau j'étais". On the site, these pieces are currently represented by a piano album at an intermediate-plus level — a place to start getting to know Henselt's music at the keyboard.
Another strand of his output consists of piano arrangements: overtures by Weber (Der Freischütz, Oberon, Euryanthe), Beethoven's Coriolan and Egmont overtures, and a transcription of Beethoven's "Pathétique" Sonata for two pianos. Henselt also wrote a manual, "Rules for Teaching Piano Playing Based on Many Years' Experience", published in Saint Petersburg in 1868.