Carl Filtsch

Carl Filtsch (28 May 1830 – 11 May 1845) was a Transylvanian pianist and composer. He was a child prodigy, and student of Frédéric Chopin.[1]

Carl Filtsch
Born(1830-05-28)28 May 1830
Mühlbach, Transylvania
Died11 May 1845(1845-05-11) (aged 14)
Venice, Italy
NationalityTransylvanian Saxon
Carl Filtsch's grave at Venetian cemetery San Michele

Life and education

Filtsch was born in Mühlbach (Sebeș) in present-day Romania. His father, a Lutheran church pastor in Mühlbach, was his first piano teacher. It was his first public success 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, Friedrich Wieck, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Ignaz Moscheles, the music critic Ludwig Rellstab, and fellow child prodigy, Anton Rubinstein. Filtsch began touring Europe on concert tours at the age of 13. After triumphant concerts in Paris, London, and Vienna, his promising career was cut short by an early death in Venice from tuberculosis.

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 [play them], without being shown the smallest thing - not exactly like me [because he has his own cachet], but certainly not less well." [1]

Recordings

References
  1. Szulc, Tad (1998). Chopin in Paris: the life and times of the romantic composer. Pg 301. Simon and Schuster, USA. ISBN 0-306-80933-8


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