Halina Krzyżanowska (1860, in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

– 1937, in Rennes) was a Polish-French pianist and composer.

Life

She was born in Paris, in a large musical family, which originally came from Poland and was a part of the impoverished Polish nobility. Halina (also ''Helene'') held by birth the title of a countess (''Gräfin'' in Germany, ''hrabina'' in Poland). She was (by her fathers family) also a distant relative of Chopin, who died 11 years before her birth. Herb Swinka

She studied at the

Conservatoire de Paris The Conservatoire de Paris (), or the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (; CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue Jean Ja ...

with

Antoine François Marmontel Antoine François Marmontel (; 18 July 1816 – 16 January 1898) was a French pianist, composer, teacher and musicographer. He is mainly known today as an influential teacher at the Paris Conservatory, where he taught many musicians who became l ...

and

Ernest Guiraud Ernest Guiraud (; 23 June 18376 May 1892) was an American-born French composer and music teacher. He is best known for writing the traditional orchestral recitatives used for Bizet's opera '' Carmen'' and for Offenbach's opera '' Les contes d ...

, and in 1880 she won the first prize at this prominent Conservatory. She gave many concerts in various European countries and settled later in France as a professor at the conservatory in

Rennes Rennes (; ; Gallo language, Gallo: ''Resnn''; ) is a city in the east of Brittany in Northwestern France at the confluence of the rivers Ille and Vilaine. Rennes is the prefecture of the Brittany (administrative region), Brittany Regions of F ...

. She was known as a very talented pianist and has made a name for herself also as a composer.

Works

Krzyżanowska composed orchestral and chamber music, piano sonatas and character pieces for piano. Selected works include: *''Magdusia'' (1894) 1-act opera *''Fantasie'' piano concerto *''Sonata'' for cello and pianoPlayed by herself and cellist Louis Rosoor in Bordeaux on 7 December 1927
''La Petite Gironde'', 9 December 1927)
( fr).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Krzyzanowska 1860 births 1937 deaths 19th-century classical composers 20th-century classical composers French classical composers Polish classical composers French people of Polish descent French women classical composers Polish women classical composers French classical pianists Polish classical pianists French women classical pianists Polish women classical pianists 20th-century women composers 19th-century women composers