Paul Baumgartner was a Swiss pianist.

Born in Altstätten, Switzerland, he studied piano and composition with Walter Braunfels

Walter Braunfels

-Life:Walter Braunfels was born in Frankfurt am Main. His first music teacher was his mother, the great-niece of the composer Louis Spohr . He continued his piano studies in Frankfurt at the Hoch Conservatory with James Kwast....

 in the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München

Hochschule für Musik und Theater München

The Hochschule für Musik und Theater München is one of the most respected traditional vocational universities in Germany specialising in music and the performing arts. The seat of the Hochschule is the former Führerbau of the NSDAP, located at Arcisstraße 12, on the eastern side of the Königsplatz...

 and with Eduard Erdmann

Eduard Erdmann

Eduard Erdmann was a Baltic German pianist and composer.Erdmann was born in Wenden in Livonia. He was the great-nephew of the philosopher Johann Eduard Erdmann. His first musical studies were in Riga, where his teachers were Bror Möllersten and Jean du Chastain and Harald Creutzburg...

 in Köln

Cologne

Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

 where he subsequently taught. Fleeing from the rise of the Nazis he took up residence in Basel

Basel

Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...

, in Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 again, where he taught in the conservatory.

A fine pianist, he was one of the musicians who rallied around the cellist Casals and played in the first Casals festival.

However, he is nowadays mainly remembered as a teacher, numbering among his pupils Alfred Brendel

Alfred Brendel

Alfred Brendel KBE is an Austrian pianist, born in Czechoslovakia and a resident of the United Kingdom. He is also a poet and author.-Biography:...

, Karl Engel

Karl Engel

Karl Engel was a Swiss pianist.In 1952 Engel was awarded the second prize at the Queen Elisabeth competition. Throughout his concert career he cultivated the art song repertory and worked extensively on works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Robert Schumann...

, Arie Vardi

Arie Vardi

Arie Vardi is an Israeli classical pianist and piano pedagogue.He is currently teaching at the Buhmann-Mehta Academy of Music in Tel Aviv, the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hanover and at the Bowdoin International Music Festival in Brunswick, Maine...

 and the conductor Günter Wand

Günter Wand

Günter Wand was a German orchestra conductor and composer. Wand studied in Wuppertal, Allenstein and Detmold. At the Cologne conservatory, he was a composition student with Philipp Jarnach and a piano student with Paul Baumgartner...

.
In 1962 he was awarded the Kunstpreis der Stadt St. Gallen. He died, in 1976, in Locarno

Locarno

Locarno is the capital of the Locarno district, located on the northern tip of Lake Maggiore in the Swiss canton of Ticino, close to Ascona at the foot of the Alps. It has a population of about 15,000...

, Switzerland.

At the age of 12, Paul Baumgartner wrote The Seven Searchers and other poems. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00089SD8O

External links

• Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks