Carl Filtsch (1830-1845), KONZERTSTÜCK for piano and orchestra (full score)

Few musicians enjoyed so brilliant a childhood as did Carl Filtsch (1830-1845). At six Filtsch launched his pianistic career with a tour in his native Transylvania. Soon thereafter he left home to continue musical studies in Vienna.

"No sooner had my father and I taken off our furs and coats," he wrote, "than we rushed to the great Mittag (Thalberg’s teacher) . . . Before becoming his pupil, Wieck (the father of the great Clara) took me in hand." When Carl was ten, following a debut at court, he left the Austrian capital.

By December, 1841, Carl and an older brother were settled in Paris. For the next year and a half Filtsch enjoyed the mentoring of Chopin and was taught as well, briefly, by Liszt. In its review of his farewell performance in France, the Monde musical likened him to Mozart, adding "thus we remember Liszt twenty years ago." In England, where the brothers next settled, critics would be more effusive still: "It must be admitted," wrote one, "that the pupil [Filtsch] surpassed the master [Chopin]."

When the brothers returned to Vienna Carl fell ill. He departed for Venice to recuperate at the home of his patroness but died there of peritonitis. He was not yet fifteen.

Although Filtsch had begun publishing smaller works, his most ambitious and impressive creation, a Konzertstueck for piano and orchestra, has remained beyond reach for a century and a half. Its resurrection now will afford twenty-first-century audiences a more ample glimpse of one of music's most formidable figures.

Ferdinand Gajewski received his early musical training in the United States under pianist Yvonne Combe and in France under Nadia Boulanger. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, where he studied piano with Adele Marcus and the eminent Bach specialist James Friskin. He holds a PhD in historical musicology from Harvard. Chopin’s works have figured prominently in his life as a pianist, while Chopin and his circle continue to be the focus of his scholarly research. Gajewski’s students now are pursuing distinguished careers as performers and university teachers. His present class of young pianists is very much visible in the media and on concert stages.