1850–1924 · Germany
Xaver Scharwenka (1850–1924) was a German pianist, composer and teacher, a pupil of Theodor Kullak. He founded conservatories in Berlin and New York, and his Chopin playing was highly valued. His fame as a composer rested chiefly on the Polish National Dances, Op. 3: the polonaise from that opus was his most popular work in his lifetime.
Theophil Franz Xaver Scharwenka was born on 6 January 1850 in Szamotuły, a town in the western part of Poland that then belonged to Prussia. His father was an architect and his mother was Polish, while the father's forebears had once moved to this region from Prague. The future pianist grew up in Posen. His brother Philipp Scharwenka also became a composer and music teacher.
His mother loved music and passed that interest on to her children from the start, and at the age of three Xaver was already picking out tunes on the piano by ear. Regular musical study, however, began only at fifteen. In Berlin, at the New Academy of Music, he learned piano from Theodor Kullak and composition from Richard Wüerst.
As early as 1868 Scharwenka himself began teaching at Kullak's academy, and in 1869 he made his debut as a concert performer at the Berlin Singakademie. His first works appeared in those same years: Piano Trio No. 1 (Op. 1, 1868), the Sonata for violin and piano, Op. 2, and the Polish dances, Op. 3. They were printed by the firm Breitkopf & Härtel.
Franz Liszt supported the young composer from 1870, when the first of the Polish dances was published. Scharwenka dedicated his First Piano Concerto, Op. 32, to Liszt, who played it himself in Berlin. He was also on friendly terms with Johannes Brahms, Ferdinand Hiller and Hugo Kaun.
Scharwenka toured widely: first around Germany, and from the mid-1870s across the whole of Europe. In 1884 he also performed in the Russian Empire. He played both solo and in ensembles, among others with Joseph Joachim, Heinrich Grünfeld and Gustav Hollaender. With the last two he formed a piano trio and gave chamber evenings at the Berlin Singakademie.
People praised the beauty of his tone, and his Chopin playing was highly prized. His playing survives on recordings, including rolls for mechanical pianos. His performances of three Chopin works were singled out above all: the Waltz in A-flat major, Op. 42, the Fantasy in F minor, Op. 49, and the Fantasy-Impromptu, Op. 66.
In the mid-1880s Scharwenka also began conducting intensively, giving most attention to works by Beethoven, Liszt and Berlioz. In 1880–1886 he prepared editions of the works of Chopin and Schumann, and later of Mendelssohn as well. He was also named a court pianist. He combined the roles of pianist, composer and teacher to the end of his career.
Scharwenka's own conservatory opened in Berlin in 1881, and he directed it until 1891. His first American tour took place in 1891. After it he decided to move to New York, where he opened a second school. In 1893 the Berlin school joined forces with the one run by Karl Klindworth, under the new name Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory; Xaver's brother Philipp took charge.
In 1898 Xaver returned to Germany and in practice took charge of his creation again, while Philipp kept the nominal leadership. In 1901 Scharwenka joined the senate of the Royal Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. The University of Tennessee had awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1896.
Over the course of his teaching he trained thousands of pupils from many countries. Those who studied with him included Otto Klemperer, Oskar Fried, Télémaque Lambrino, Edward Fazer and José Vianna da Motta. Scharwenka chaired the Music Teachers' Association and the Association of Concert Artists of Germany. In 1907 his book on piano teaching, Methodik des Klavierspiels, appeared. In 1914, together with Walter Petzet, he opened one more school, with a seminar for piano teachers attached to it.
The piano always stayed at the centre of Scharwenka's work. He wrote four piano concertos: the first, Op. 32, is dedicated to Liszt, and the fourth, Op. 82 (1908), to Queen Elisabeth of Romania. The fourth concerto was a great success in New York, where the composer himself was the soloist and Gustav Mahler stood at the conductor's desk.
Scharwenka wrote the opera Mataswintha after Felix Dahn's novel A Struggle for Rome. It was first given in Weimar in 1896, with the composer himself conducting, and met with success. The composer also left a Symphony in C minor, Op. 60.
Scharwenka wrote a great many piano pieces. They include Six Studies and Preludes, Op. 27, Six Waltzes, Op. 28, the Tarantelle, Op. 11, the Polonaise, Op. 42, and the Mazurka Caprice, Op. 69 (1894). For four hands he composed Nordisches, Op. 21, Bilder aus dem Süden, Op. 39, and the Suite de danses, Op. 41. He also published teaching material for pianists: Beiträge zur Fingerbildung, Op. 77 (1903), and Studien im Oktavspiel, Op. 78 (1904).
Scharwenka made Zinaida Guseva, a Russian pupil of his, his wife in 1877. In the early 1910s he had a summer house built in Bad Saarow, his "Hut of the Muses". The timber-frame house survives: since 2005 it has been a protected monument and is known as the Scharwenka House.
Scharwenka's memoirs were issued in 1922 under the title Klänge aus meinem Leben ("Sounds from My Life"), and an English edition followed in 2007. On 8 December 1924 he died in Berlin; his grave is in the old St Matthew cemetery.
After Scharwenka's death his compositions receded into the background for some time, and since the mid-1990s interest in them has returned: his music is being recorded again, so that most of his works can now be bought on disc. It was the Polish National Dances, Op. 3, that above all made his name.
The core of Scharwenka's legacy is music involving the piano: solo pieces, chamber ensembles and four concertos. These are Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 32, No. 2 in C minor, Op. 56, No. 3 in C-sharp minor, Op. 80, and No. 4 in F minor, Op. 82. Among the chamber works are Piano Trio No. 2 in A minor, Op. 45, and the Piano Quartet in F major, Op. 37. There are also piano sonatas and sets of Polish dances, for example Op. 58. One reviewer noted in his chamber music echoes of other composers, from Mendelssohn to Rachmaninoff. Besides piano pieces and ensembles with a piano part, he wrote a symphony and an opera; there are also songs and choral music.
In his lifetime the most popular piece was the small polonaise in E-flat minor, Op. 3 No. 1. The composer's reputation rested precisely on the Polish National Dances, Op. 3. The site has the Polish National Dances, Op. 3, for solo piano, at the level "Intermediate+". This opus is a convenient place to begin getting to know the composer.
After the composer's death his works spent some time in the shadows, although the polonaise Op. 3 No. 1 remained popular. The first sign of renewed interest was a recording of the First Concerto released by the pianist Earl Wild, with the Boston orchestra and Erich Leinsdorf conducting. Scharwenka's music made a full return in the 1990s; among those who recorded it were Seta Tanyel, Michael Ponti, Stephen Hough and Marc-André Hamelin.
Among his other piano works, two sonatas deserve mention: the First in C-sharp minor, Op. 6, and the Second in E-flat major, Op. 36. There are also sets of pieces, for example the three pieces of Op. 86: Nocturne, Serenade and Märchen. For pianists working on technique, Scharwenka published collections for finger development and octave playing. For voice and piano he wrote songs, for example four songs for mezzo-soprano, Op. 10, and eight songs for middle voice, Op. 88. For violin and piano he left, besides the Sonata Op. 2, the Serenade, Op. 70.