1794–1870 · Austria
Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870) was a virtuoso pianist, conductor, composer and teacher, born in Prague. He lived in Vienna, London and Leipzig, was friends with Beethoven and Mendelssohn, and from 1846 taught piano at the Leipzig Conservatory. His studies were taken up by advanced pupils; on this site his sheet music is marked 'Intermediate+'.
Ignaz Moscheles was born in Prague on 23 May 1794 into an affluent Jewish family. At birth he was called Isaac, and he took the name Ignaz later, in Vienna. His father, a guitar player, hoped that one of his children would take up music. He first counted on his daughter, but she refused, and the piano lessons passed to his son.
Moscheles learned the piano in Prague. As a boy he was drawn to the piano music of Beethoven, then regarded as revolutionary. His teacher tried to hold back this enthusiasm and advised him to study Bach, Mozart and Clementi instead.
In 1808 Moscheles went to Vienna. He studied composition with Antonio Salieri, and theory and counterpoint with J. G. Albrechtsberger. He began performing as a child, and at 14 he played a concerto of his own.
In Vienna Moscheles met his idol, Beethoven. In 1814 Beethoven asked him to prepare a piano arrangement of the opera Fidelio. Beethoven approved the result and appended a remark of his own to the manuscript. The rapport he had with Beethoven would later serve them both well.
While the Congress of Vienna met in 1814–1815, Moscheles ranked among the foremost virtuosos living in the city. At that time he composed the Alexander Variations, Op. 32, for piano with orchestra, and went on to play them across Europe. In Vienna he also grew close to Giacomo Meyerbeer; the two men's improvised piano duets drew warm applause.
After the Vienna years came a string of sensational concert tours around Europe. The young Robert Schumann heard Moscheles play in Carlsbad and resolved to become a virtuoso pianist himself. Moscheles was welcomed with special warmth in London. He made his first appearance there in 1822, became friends with Muzio Clementi and Johann Baptist Cramer, and was elected an honorary member of London's Academy of Music, the body that later turned into the Royal Academy.
In March 1823 Moscheles went to Bath for a long stay and began composing his Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 64. Its premiere took place in London a little later, on 16 June.
In 1825 Moscheles married Charlotte Emden, the daughter of a Jewish banker and a cousin of the poet Heinrich Heine. After the wedding he settled in London. The couple had five children, two sons and three daughters; among them were the painters Felix and Serena Anna.
In 1832 he became one of the directors of the Royal Philharmonic Society. Teaching was the mainstay of his income: many of his pupils came from wealthy and aristocratic families. He bore the title 'Pianist to Prince Albert', which was purely nominal yet confirmed his standing. Henri Litolff, who had already performed at Covent Garden at the age of 12, was also his pupil.
In 1824 Moscheles travelled to Berlin and gave lessons to the Mendelssohn Bartholdy children, Felix and Fanny. This was the start of a friendship that lasted all their lives. In 1829 he helped Felix make his first journey to London: the father placed the young man in his care, and Moscheles made careful preparations in advance.
In London the two often performed together. Bach's concertos for several keyboard instruments were great favourites of both, and in them the friends vied with each other in improvised cadenzas. The concerto for three keyboards was played once with Thalberg at the third instrument and once with Clara Schumann.
In London Moscheles became a valued adviser to the Philharmonic Society, pointing out European musicians worth its attention. When George Smart travelled across Europe in 1825 looking for new music and new performers for the Society, Moscheles supplied him with a list of acquaintances and letters of recommendation, among them ones addressed to Beethoven and Mendelssohn. In time this led to Mendelssohn being invited to conduct for the Society when he visited in 1829.
In 1827 Moscheles served as go-between for the Philharmonic Society and Beethoven, who was gravely ill. He helped to convince the Society to send the composer the money he urgently needed. Beethoven responded by offering to write a Tenth Symphony for the Society, which was never finished.
Moscheles championed Beethoven's music throughout his life. In 1832 he conducted the first London performance of the Missa Solemnis and made an English translation of Schindler's biography of the composer. On 14 March 1839 he gave the first completely public performance of the Hammerklavier Sonata in London. He was also among the first to give piano recitals, concerts devoted to piano music alone, and he brought the harpsichord back to the stage as a solo instrument.
Moscheles began to appear as a conductor in 1837, and he most often conducted Beethoven. In 1844 he received visits from the Russian foreign minister K. V. Nesselrode and the ambassador to England, F. I. Brunnov. A trip to St Petersburg was being planned for him but fell through because Grand Duchess Alexandra Nikolaevna died.
In 1843 Mendelssohn founded a conservatory in Leipzig and was keen to attract his friend there, promising him ample time for concert-giving. Moscheles agreed only after several years; in January 1846 he moved to Leipzig for good. He remained professor of piano at the Conservatory for the rest of his life, teaching there for several decades.
Among his pupils were Rafael Joseffy, Louis Brassin, Nikolai Lysenko, Joseph Asher, Woldemar Bargiel, Ivan Knorr and many others. The critic and pianist Edward Dannreuther studied with Moscheles in Leipzig from 1859 to 1863. Arthur Sullivan and Charles Villiers Stanford also studied at the Conservatory during Moscheles's time. As a teacher Moscheles followed the Clementi school and insisted on a quiet hand position: what mattered was the agility of the fingers, while the pedals were used as little as possible.
Moscheles led the response to Wagner's attack on Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer in his article on Jewry in music, asking for the resignation of Brendel, Wagner's editor, from the Conservatory's board. Like Mendelssohn, he held that music's golden age ran from Bach to Beethoven, and he was wary of the new directions shown by Wagner, Liszt and Berlioz. His personal relations with them, perhaps Wagner excepted, stayed cordial.
Ignaz Moscheles died on 10 March 1870 in Leipzig. Nine days earlier he had taken part in his final rehearsal with the Gewandhaus Orchestra. He lies in the family grave at the New St John's Cemetery.
Moscheles's catalogue runs to 142 numbered opuses. His orchestral output is mostly for piano with orchestra: there are eight piano concertos, though of the last only a fragment has come down to us and no orchestral parts, together with variations and fantasias on folk songs. Beyond these he wrote an overture, a ballet and a symphony, chamber music (a piano trio among it) and several songs. The finale of his fourth concerto takes its principal theme from the tune 'The British Grenadiers'.
The concertos include Concerto No. 3 in G minor, Op. 58, Concerto No. 4 in E major, Op. 64, Concerto No. 6 in B-flat major, Op. 90, titled Concert fantastique, Concerto No. 7 in C minor, Op. 93 (Concert pathetique), and Concerto No. 8 in D major, Op. 96 (Concerto pastorale). Among his other works are the Alexander Variations, Op. 32, for piano and orchestra, and the Fantasia, Variations and Finale on a Bohemian folk song, Op. 46. There are also the three Allegri di bravura, Op. 51: La Forza, La Leggerezza and Il Capriccio, that is 'Strength', 'Lightness' and 'Whim'.
Other pieces link him to his teacher: the Fantaisie héroïque for piano in E-flat major, Op. 13, is dedicated to Salieri, and the Impromptu martial in G major, Op. 65, is based on a march from Salieri's opera Palmira, regina di Persia. Among the concertos one can also name No. 1 in F major, Op. 45, and No. 5 in C major, Op. 87.
His solo piano output includes sonatas and studies. Even when the rest of his music was fading from view, the studies stayed in the repertoire of advanced students. They include Op. 70, characteristic pieces, and the Characteristic Studies, Op. 95, of 1836. Admiration for his piano pieces was widespread while he lived, and some are still performed. Lately his music has been attracting a little more attention again, and every finished piano concerto, along with the whole set of piano studies, is now on disc.
Modern recordings come mostly from small independent labels. On Hyperion, Howard Shelley plays all the completed piano concertos and the fantasias for piano and orchestra, and he conducts the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra in them; Piers Lane recorded the whole cycle of piano studies. Ian Hobson recorded the first six concertos.
The site has eight editions of Moscheles, all marked at the level 'Intermediate+'. For solo piano: 'Rondo Carnaval de Venise', 'Beethoven Cadenza' (Op. 58), 'Sonata-melancolique' (Op. 49), 'Nocturne' and 'Verdi Nabucco'. For piano and orchestra: the first movement of Piano Concerto 2 and movements 2 and 3 of Piano Concerto No 2. For voice and piano: 'Souvenir d'Opera 1'. To get to know the composer you can start with 'Nocturne', then move on to 'Rondo Carnaval de Venise' and 'Sonata-melancolique'.