Pianists Karl Heinrich Barth and Louis Diemer
Two Famous Male Pianists of the Nineteenth Century
Sep 20, 2008
A fine pianist and revered teacher, Karl Heinrich Barth was born on July 12, 1847 in Pillau, East Prussia. His father was his first teacher and in 1856 he began lessons in Potsdam with L. Steinmann. His later teachers included Hans von Bulow 1830-1894) Hans von Bronsart (1830-1913) and Karl Tausig (1841-1871).
Karl Barth was a piano teacher at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin,a conservatory (founded in Berlin in 1850 by Julius Stern and Theodore Kullak) from 1868 and he moved to the Royal School of Music in London in a similar position. He toured extensively through England and Germany with Joseph Joachim and his wife, the singer Amalie Weiss, and was one of the founders of a piano trio with the violinist Heinrich Karl Hermann de Ahna (1835-1892) and the cellist Robert Hausmann (1852-1909).
Barth was also the Court Pianist to Crown Prince Friedrich. After a notable career as pianist and teacher ...he was head of the piano department at the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin from 1910...Karl Heinrich Barth died at Berlin in 1923.
Louis Diemer
A Frenchman, born on February 14, 1843, Louis Diemer was not a virtuoso pianist...rather he let the music speak for itself. Beginning as a pupil at the Paris Conservatoire, he later became professor of piano there. In the words of the noted musical critic Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904):
"The musician in question played at a Philharmonic concert, and then at one of his own at the Bosendorfer Saal, which was well attended and the building echoed with applause."
"In a long series of solo pieces, beginning with Beethoven's C-minor Variations, and ending with a Liszt Rhapsody, Diemer displayed his most attractive talents...a few pieces by the older French composers soon transferred him into his own element...the exquisite old Gallic grace of Couperin, Dacquin, and Rameau cannot be rendered in a more delicate or graceful manner than by Mons.Diemer."
"The Variations for two pianos by Robert Fischof also met with a good reception. and performed by two such excellent pianists as Diemer and Fischof the work was heard to its best advantage, and had a brilliant effect."
Diemer was a member of the Legion d'Honneur from 1889, and composed concertos for piano, a great deal of chamber music, piano pieces and edited the Clavecinistes Francais, 2 vols. He founded the group, Societe des Anciens Instruments, and had many composers dedicate their compositions to him.
Louis Diemer died in Paris in 1919.
Sources
Celebrated Pianists of the Past and Present A.Ehrlich, Theodore Presser, Philadelphia, 1894
The New Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians The MacMillan Company, 1924
For further reading see Women Pianists of the Past
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