# Carl Filtsch (1830-1845)



## Lukecash12

*CARL FILTSCH ca. 1843

(Portrait by the Hungarian painter József Borsos, 
destroyed in Vienna in World War II, from a photograph) 
*

Quote from http://www.freewebs.com/fjgajewski/

"An unknown piano concerto by Chopin's student Carl Filtsch (1830-1845), one of the towering personalities of nineteenth-century music, has been brought to light. Filtsch's Konzertstueck may be heard here for the first time, albeit in virtual performance.

The composer's manuscript of the Konzertstueck, composed in 1843?-1844, was discovered in England in the possession of Sir Francis Loring, a descendent of Filtsch's oldest brother Joseph, by American pianist-musicologist, Ferdinand Gajewski, who has published elsewhere online his edition of the full score, the piano solo part and the orchestral instrumental parts.

"When this little one begins to tour," said Liszt of Carl Filtsch, "I will have to close up shop." Few indeed have enjoyed so brilliant a childhood as did Filtsch. At six he launched his pianistic career with a tour in his native Transylvania. Not long thereafter Filtsch left home to continue musical studies in Vienna. "No sooner had my father and I taken off our furs and coats," he wrote, "than we rushed to the great Mittag . . . Before becoming his pupil, Wieck (the father of the great Clara [later the wife of composer Robert Schumann]) took me in hand."

When Carl was ten, following a debut at court, he left the Austrian capital. By December, 1841, Carl and his brother Joseph were settled in Paris where Carl would enjoy the mentoring of Chopin. In its review of his farewell performance in France, the Monde musical likened Carl Filtsch to Mozart, adding "thus we remember Liszt twenty years ago." In England, where the brothers settled next, critics would be more effusive still. "It must be admitted," wrote one, "that the pupil [Filtsch] surpassed the master [Chopin]." When the brothers returned to Vienna Carl fell ill while waiting in the theater wings to premiere his Konzertstueck. Filtsch was brought to Venice to recuperate at the home of his patroness and died there of peritonitis. He was not yet fifteen.

Although Carl Filtsch had begun to publish his own solo piano compositions, his most ambitious and impressive creation, the Konzertstueck for piano and orchestra, has remained beyond reach for a century and a half. The resurrection of this astonishing piece now will give twenty-first-century audiences a more ample glimpse of one of music's most formidable figures. "










*Carl Filtsch's grave in Venice*


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## Air

Oh, yes. Chopin's only great pupil. What a pity he died so young.


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## Lukecash12

But we still have some of his compositions.


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## World Violist

If this isn't a "what if" case in classical music, I don't know what is!


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## Lukecash12

World Violist said:


> If this isn't a "what if" case in classical music, I don't know what is!


I couldn't agree more.


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