There were many concert pianists in the nineteenth century, virtuosi who travelled the world...but not all were also composers. Here are short biographies of two whose works were published and performed in their lifetimes.
Franz Bendel
Bendel was born in 1832 near Rumburg in Bohemia, and died only forty-one years later in Berlin. Little is known about this musician but he did receive his early piano training with Joseph Proksch at the School of Music of Joseph Proksch in Prague. After study there he went to Weimar where he was accepted as a student of Franz Liszt. He soon began to tour and was received with great enthusiasm as a concert artist.
In 1862 he moved to Berlin where he was professor of piano at the New Kullak Academy of Music, active as a performer and teacher, he is primarily remembered as a composer. In his short life he composed over 100 works, including 4 masses, a piano concerto, a piano trio, symphonies, arrangements of operatic arias for the piano and various books of songs. Bendel died at Berlin in 1874.
William Sterndale Bennett
On the other hand, Bennett was very well known during his lifetime and was once considered one of the finest musicians England had ever produced. While a pupil at the Royal Academy of Music in London he performed his own Piano Concerto in D minor with Felix Mendelssohn in the audience. Mendelssohn was impressed by the young pianist's playing and became his friend.
Born into a musical family in Sheffield, England, on April 13, 1816, he became a pupil of the Royal Academy where his teachers were William Henry Holmes (1812-1885), William Crotch (1775-1847), Charles Lucas (1808-1869) and Cipriani Potter (1792-1871). He passed the examinations in 1833 and wrote a piano concerto which was published at the expense of the Academy.
Mendelssohn and Schumann
In 1837 he went to Leipzig, sponsored by the Broadwood piano company, where he met again with Mendelssohn and made the acquaintance of Robert Schumann. For many years he was a sought-after performer and teacher in England, where in 1840 he founded the Bach Society in London. He was later asked to be conductor of the Philharmonic Society in London, and received many honorary degrees. He was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1871.
Bennett married Mary Anne Wood in 1844 and settled in London. He became Principal of the Royal Academy of Music in 1866 and received the degree of Doctor of Music from Cambridge Unversity, followed by an honorary degree of Doctor of Music from Oxford University. He was said to have been a pianist of great dexterity and finish.
Bennett was the composer of many piano concerti,sonatas,overtures, songs and a symphony.
Sources
Celebrated Pianists of the Past and Present A.Ehrlich, Theodore Presser Philadelphia 1894
The New Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians Macmillan Company 1929
For further reading about pianists see Theodore Kullak
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