1818–1869
Alexander Dreyschock (1818–1869) was a Czech pianist and composer famous for an extraordinary left-hand technique: he could play passages normally reserved for the right hand. He studied in Prague under Václav Tomášek, toured across Europe, and from 1862 taught at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. For players today, he stands out as a composer of virtuosic Romantic-era concert pieces.
Alexander Dreyschock was born on 15 October 1818 in the village of Žáky, near Čáslav, in Bohemia — then officially the Kingdom of Bohemia. He had a younger brother, Raimund, who later became a violinist, and years afterwards Alexander himself became the uncle of Felix Dreyschock. Music was part of life in the household from early childhood, and Alexander's own talent was noticed very early: by the age of eight the boy was already drawing attention with his piano playing.
From 1834, when he was about fifteen, Alexander studied in Prague under the pianist and composer Václav Tomášek, learning piano playing and composition side by side. By the age of twenty he was ready for concert tours of his own: his first real tour began in December 1838, taking the young pianist through several towns of northern and central Germany — his first real encounter with audiences beyond Prague.
In 1839 Dreyschock was appointed court pianist to the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Already in these years he caused a genuine sensation with his brilliant playing of thirds, sixths and octaves, along with other striking effects. From 1840 to 1842 he lived and worked in Saint Petersburg.
From Saint Petersburg, Dreyschock set out on a grand European tour: he performed in London and in towns of the Netherlands, and in 1846 he reached Austria and Hungary. In 1849 he also visited Denmark and Sweden. Altogether these travels spanned a full decade — from 1840 to 1849.
In the spring of 1843 Dreyschock gave a concert in Paris, where he performed Chopin's Revolutionary Étude — a piece whose fastest passages usually fall to the right hand. Dreyschock, however, played the left-hand part not in single notes but in octaves, doubling every passage, which his contemporaries found almost physically impossible. Observers noted that, despite the difficulty, he kept the tempo exact and never slowed down.
The audience was so struck by this performance that, as the story goes, one of the famous pianists of the day joked that Dreyschock seemingly had no left hand at all — only two right ones. From then on, he played this version of the étude at nearly every recital. The critic Edward Dannreuther wrote that Dreyschock was a master of octaves, sixths and thirds, whose playing represented the peak of mechanical training.
In the second half of the 1850s Dreyschock lived and worked mainly in Prague, still performing in concert alongside his teaching. During these years he taught, among others, Vilém Blodek and Władysław Żeleński. His playing was heard by the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen — probably in Copenhagen in 1856 — who dedicated an admiring quatrain to the pianist.
In 1858 Dreyschock travelled to Weimar and Kassel to meet Liszt and Spohr, though the visit itself was never mentioned in Spohr's own records.
In 1862, at Anton Rubinstein's invitation, Dreyschock returned to Saint Petersburg and joined the staff of the newly founded conservatory as a professor, while also becoming Director of the Imperial School of Music for the Operatic Stage. From 1865 he also held the post of court pianist; he carried this double load for six years.
Among his students, besides Arkady Abaza, were Ella Adayevskaya, Zuleima Hahr and Wilhelm Treiber. Besides playing and teaching, Dreyschock occasionally worked as a conductor too. Dreyschock's health suffered badly from the northern climate: he fell ill with tuberculosis, and the illness gradually grew worse.
In 1868 Dreyschock left Saint Petersburg for Italy to seek treatment, but the change of climate did not help. He died of tuberculosis on 1 April 1869 in Venice, at the age of fifty. At his family's wish, his body was taken to Prague and buried at the Olšany Cemetery. His concert and teaching career spanned a little more than thirty years — from his first tour in 1838 to his death in 1869.
Dreyschock left a broad body of compositions: pieces for solo piano and works with orchestra. During his lifetime they were very successful, but after his death they were almost forgotten. Larger works with orchestra are not available on the site — only the pieces for solo piano are.
Among Dreyschock's works, the variations on "God Save the Queen" for the left hand alone, Op. 129, are well known — a piece built around the very virtuosic technique that made him famous.
Today the site offers exactly these variations, along with the concert étude "Le Tremolo" — both pieces are rated at an intermediate-plus level and above, and suit players who have moved past the beginner stage and want to try the showy virtuosic technique of the Romantic era. It is best to start getting to know Dreyschock with these two pieces, while anyone wanting to hear his larger works for piano and orchestra should turn to recordings on disc.
Interest in Dreyschock's music revived in the 21st century: some of his works were included in the "Romantic Piano Concerto" series on the Hyperion Records label, performed by Piers Lane and Howard Shelley, while pianist Michael Krücker recorded a separate album of his solo pieces. Thanks to these recordings, Dreyschock's music could be heard again, performed by present-day pianists, for the first time in a long while.