Alfred Jaëll was an austrian-ungarick pianist.

He was born in Trieste

Trieste

Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...

. He studied under Carl Czerny

Carl Czerny

Carl Czerny was an Austrian pianist, composer and teacher. He is best remembered today for his books of études for the piano. Czerny's music was profoundly influenced by his teachers, Muzio Clementi, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Antonio Salieri and Ludwig van Beethoven.-Early life:Carl Czerny was born...

and began his public career at the age of 11, appearing at the Teatro San Benedetto

Teatro San Benedetto

The Teatro San Benedetto was a theatre in Venice, particularly prominent in the operatic life of the city in the 18th and early 19th centuries. It saw the premieres of over 140 operas, including Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri, and was the theatre of choice for the presentation of opera seria until...

, Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

, in 1843. The following year he studied with Ignaz Moscheles

Ignaz Moscheles

Ignaz Moscheles was a Bohemian composer and piano virtuoso, whose career after his early years was based initially in London, and later at Leipzig, where he succeeded his friend and sometime pupil Felix Mendelssohn as head of the Conservatoire.-Sources:Much of what we know about Moscheles's life...

 in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

. In 1845 and 1846 he lived in Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

, then Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. According to one source, he was a student of Chopin

Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....

, and according to another, he was a student of Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

; however, most sources make no mention of these associations.

Jaëll made a tour of the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, which was so successful that he stayed for three years, from 1851 to 1854. He made his New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 debut on 15 November 1851, to ecstatic reviews. At his second concert on 22 November, he introduced Adelina Patti

Adelina Patti

Adelina Patti was a highly acclaimed 19th-century opera singer, earning huge fees at the height of her career in the music capitals of Europe and America. She first sang in public as a child in 1851 and gave her last performance before an audience in 1914...

 to the American public. He also gave recitals with Ole Bull

Ole Bull

Ole Bornemann Bull was a Norwegian violinist and composer.-Background:Bull was born in Bergen. He was the eldest of ten children of Johan Storm Bull and Anna Dorothea Borse Geelmuyden . His brother, Georg Andreas Bull became a noted Norwegian architect...

. He was generally acknowledged to be the finest pianist ever to have visited America up to that time. He took some of Louis Moreau Gottschalk

Louis Moreau Gottschalk

Louis Moreau Gottschalk was an American composer and pianist, best known as a virtuoso performer of his own romantic piano works...

’s works into his repertoire and helped to popularise them. He returned to Europe in 1854. He was made court pianist to the King of Hanover in 1855. He performed in London in 1862 and 1866.

In 1866 he married Marie Trautmann

Marie Jaëll

Marie Jaëll was a French pianist, composer, and music teacher.She was born Marie Trautmann in Steinseltz, Bas-Rhin, and studied under Camille Saint-Saëns and César Franck. In 1862 she won first prize at the Paris Conservatory, where she was a student...

, a French pianist and writer of pedagogical works. They toured together, performing their own works as well as the standard repertoire. He was one of Henryk Wieniawski

Henryk Wieniawski

Henryk Wieniawski was a Polish violinist and composer.-Biography:Henryk Wieniawski was born in Lublin, Congress Poland, Russian Empire. His father, Tobiasz Pietruszka, had converted to Catholicism. His talent for playing the violin was recognized early, and in 1843 he entered the Paris...

’s accompanists for his famous performances of Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

’s Kreutzer Sonata

Violin Sonata No. 9 (Beethoven)

Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major, commonly known as the Kreutzer Sonata, is a violin sonata which Ludwig van Beethoven published as his Opus 47...

.. He was the soloist in the London premiere of Joachim Raff

Joachim Raff

Joseph Joachim Raff was a German-Swiss composer, teacher and pianist.-Biography:Raff was born in Lachen in Switzerland. His father, a teacher, had fled there from Württemberg in 1810 to escape forced recruitment into the military of that southwestern German state that had to fight for Napoleon in...

’s Piano Concerto in 1875.

Alfred Jaëll died quite suddenly in Paris in 1882, aged only 49, leaving Marie a 35-year old widow. He left a number of "extremely effective" transcriptions from Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

, Schumann

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....

 and Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...

, as well as original compositions, all now forgotten.

His students included Benjamin Johnson Lang

Benjamin Johnson Lang

Benjamin Johnson Lang was an American conductor, pianist, organist, teacher and composer. He introduced a large amount of music to American ears, including the world premiere of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No...

 and Samuel Sanford

Samuel Sanford

Samuel Simons Sanford was an American pianist and educator.He was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He studied piano in New York with William Mason...

 (the eponym of the Sanford Medal).

Sources

• Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th edition, 1954

Marie-Laure Ingelaere, Alfred Jaëll, ami de Brahms et de Liszt : un pionnier. In : Marie Jaëll "un cerveau de philosophe et des doigts d'artiste"/Catherine Guichard, Laurent Hurpeau, Marie-Laure Ingelaere, Thérèse Klipffel, Laure Pasteau, Alexandre Sorel, Christiane de Turckheim. Lyon: Symétrie, 2004, pp. 33-53.

External links