Carl Filtsch (28 May 1830 – 11 May 1845) was a

Transylvania Transylvania ( ro, Ardeal or ; hu, Erdély; german: Siebenbürgen) is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains, and to the west the Ap ...

pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...

and

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

. He was a

child prodigy A child prodigy is defined in psychology research literature as a person under the age of ten who produces meaningful output in some domain at the level of an adult expert. The term is also applied more broadly to young people who are extraor ...

, and student of

Frédéric Chopin Frédéric François Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin; 1 March 181017 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period, who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leadin ...

.Szulc, Tad (1998). Chopin in Paris: the life and times of the romantic composer. Pg 301. Simon and Schuster, USA.

Life and education

Filtsch was born in Mühlbach (

Sebeș Sebeș (; German: ''Mühlbach''; Hungarian: ''Szászsebes''; Transylvanian Saxon dialect: ''Melnbach'') is a city in Alba County, central Romania, southern Transylvania. Geography The city lies in the Mureș River valley and straddles the rive ...

) in present-day

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...

. His father, a Lutheran church pastor in Mühlbach, was his first piano teacher. His first public success came at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. Carl and his brother Joseph, also a child pianist, arrived in Paris on November 29, 1841, and immediately sought out Chopin to be Carl's teacher. Though Chopin almost never taught children, and rarely gave a student more than one lesson per week, he agreed to teach Carl, and gave him three lessons per week. Considered Chopin's most talented pupil, Filtsch received high praise from

Franz Liszt Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...

, Friedrich Wieck,

Giacomo Meyerbeer Giacomo Meyerbeer (born Jakob Liebmann Beer; 5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a German opera composer, "the most frequently performed opera composer during the nineteenth century, linking Mozart and Wagner". With his 1831 opera ''Robert le di ...

, Ignaz Moscheles, the music critic

Ludwig Rellstab Heinrich Friedrich Ludwig Rellstab (13 April 179927 November 1860) was a German poet and music critic. He was born and died in Berlin. He was the son of the music publisher and composer Johann Carl Friedrich Rellstab. An able pianist, he publi ...

, and fellow child prodigy, Anton Rubinstein. Filtsch began touring Europe on concert tours at the age of 13. After triumphant concerts in

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, and

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, his promising career was cut short by an early death in Venice from

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...

Quality of playing

According to numerous letters from Chopin and his acquaintances, Chopin considered Filtsch the most worthy interpreter of his music. A friend of Chopin, Ferdinand Denis, reported in an article in Vienna's '' Der Humorist'' in February 1843 that on one occasion after listening to Filtsch, Chopin exclaimed, "My God! What a child! Nobody has ever understood me as this child has...It is not imitation, it is the same sentiment, an instinct that makes him play without thinking as if it could not have been any other way. He plays almost all my compositions without having heard me lay them without being shown the smallest thing - not exactly like me ecause he has his own cachet but certainly not less well."

Recordings

Filtsch, Talberg, Liszt, Chopin: Piano music
- Leonhard Westermayr (CD MMS 2616) * (2010
Mikuli, Teffelsen, Filtsch, Gutmann: Piano music
- Hubert Rutkowski ( Naxos 8.572344) * (2011
Mikuli, Teffelsen, Filtsch: Violin & piano music
- Voytek Proniewicz, Alexander Jakobidze-Gitman ( Naxos 8.572460) * (2012
Tellefsen and Filtsch: Piano Concerto, Concert Piece, Overture
- Hubert Rutkowski,

Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra The Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra ( pl, Polska Orkiestra Radiowa) is a Polish radio orchestra founded in 1945 in Warsaw by Stefan Rachoń. Initially, the orchestra made records only for Polish radio and television. In 1970, the orchestra bega ...

, Lukasz Borowicz (

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177 2) *(2016)
Carl Filtsch Piano Solo Pieces
- Chiyo Hagiwara (ALCD-9161)

References

External links

Konzertstueck by Carl Filtsch (1830-1845)

Partial list of works
Polish Romantic composers Austrian classical composers Austrian children Transylvanian Saxon people 1830 births 1845 deaths Austrian classical pianists Male classical pianists Child classical musicians Pupils of Frédéric Chopin People from Sebeș 19th-century deaths from tuberculosis 19th-century classical composers 19th-century classical pianists 19th-century male musicians Tuberculosis deaths in Italy Infectious disease deaths in Veneto {{Austria-composer-stub