Born in Wrocław into a Polish Jewish family, pianist and composer MORITZ MOSZKOWSKI is considered a German composer since he spent almost his entire life in Germany. Although in our day he may not be well known, Moszkowski was a widely respected and popular figure around the close of the nineteenth century. Of him, Polish pianist, composer and statesman Ignacy Jan Paderewski opined: “After Chopin, Moszkowski best understands how to write for the piano, and his writing embraces the whole gamut of piano technique.” Having displayed his talent at a very tender age, Moszkowski began his musical training at home until 1865, when his family moved to Dresden where he continued to study piano at the conservatory. He moved to Berlin in 1869 to continue his studies first at the Julius Stern’s Conservatory, where he studied piano with Eduard Franck and composition with Friedrich Kiel, and then at Theodor Kullak’s Neue Akademie der Tonkunst, where he studied composition with Richard Wüerst and orchestration with Heinrich Dorn. In 1871, the Pole received a proposal from Kullak to join his academy as a teacher; himself a competent violinist, Moszkowski occasionally played first violin on the academic orchestra. As a professor at the Berlin Conservatory, members of his class included many famous artists and performers over the years.

The year 1873 saw Moszkowski make his first successful appearance as pianist, and subsequently he was touring the contiguous townships, quickly establishing his reputation. Two years later he had already performed a two-piano reduction of his piano concerto together with Ferenc Liszt at a matineé before a selected audience invited by Liszt himself. Moszkowski also commenced a concert-touring routine around Europe, with the reputation of being an exceptional concert pianist and brilliant composer, and gaining additional recognition as a conductor. However, due to an incipient neurological problem in his arm, by the mid-1880s, Moszkowski was forced to reduce gradually his concert activity and to devote himself mostly to composing, teaching and conducting. In 1887 he was invited to London where he had the chance to introduce many of his orchestral pieces and was awarded honorary membership of the Royal Philharmonic Society.

In 1897, Moszkowski moved to Paris, where he was frequently sought after as a teacher, with his Parisian students including Vlado Perlemuter, Thomas Beecham, Josef Hofmann, Wanda Landowska, and Gaby Casadesus. In 1899, the Berlin Academy elected him a member. But ten years later, in his mid-fifties, with his health deteriorating, the great musician had to withdraw into seclusion, refusing to take any more composition pupils, and subsequently his popularity began to fade and his career slowly went into decline. Moszkowski spent his last years in poverty, since the securities, in which he had invested his incomes from selling copyrights, were rendered worthless during the war. On 21 December 1924, when he was gravely ill and heavily in debt, his friends and devotees arranged a grand testimonial concert on his behalf at Carnegie Hall, involving such renowned performers as Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Percy Grainger, Josef Lhévinne, Elly Ney, Wilhelm Backhaus and Harold Bauer, under the direction of Frank Damrosch. The profit from the concert was supposed to provide for his financial security for the rest of his life, but he died in March of the following year before those funds had reached him.

Although his remarkable music making and wonderful technique rendered him an acknowledged master of the piano repertoire, it was for his own compositions that he was most ardently admired by devotees across Europe. His music rapidly became a sensation, his major works for the stage and the concert hall also enjoying great success. Moszkowski has left large musical output, having composed over two hundred piano pieces, which brought him much popularity – notably his set of Spanish Dances Op. 12 for piano duet; his Serenade Op. 15; his fifteen Études de Virtuosité, Op. 72, which have been performed by virtuoso pianists such as Vladimir Horowitz and Marc-André Hamelin; brilliant miniatures, such as Étincelles, frequently performed as encores. He also wrote larger opuses – two piano concertos, a violin concerto, orchestral suites, symphonic poem Jeanne d’Arc. His Suite in G Minor for two violins and piano has been recorded by the illustrious violinists Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman. His historical opera Boabdil, der letzte Maurenkönig (‘Boabdil, the Last King of the Moors’) premiered at the Berlin Court Opera on 21 April 1892, and the following year was staged in Prague and New York City. He also wrote the music to the three-act ballet Laurin in 1896.