23 メンデルスゾーンの家庭教師♪

1794年5月23日 に、作曲家でピアニストのモシェレス誕生♪

息子フェリックス・モシェレスによる肖像画

イグナーツ・モシェレスは、チェコのプラハで、裕福なユダヤ系の商人の息子として生まれた。父親は息子を音楽家に育てたいと熱望していた。ピアノをならい始めたイグナーツはすぐさまベートーヴェンの音楽への情熱に目覚めた♪

父親を早くに亡くした後、モシェレスは1808年にウィーンに移り住み、アルブレヒツベルガーに対位法を、アントニオ・サリエリに作曲を習う♪　その後のヨーロッパ演奏旅行は、演奏を聴いたロベルト・シューマンがピアニストへの道を断念するほどのセンセーションを巻き起こす♪

モシェレスは1824年に銀行家アブラハム・メンデルスゾーンから、子どもたちにレッスンして欲しいと請われ、ベルリンに向かった。以下はその際のモシェレスの日記。

見たこともないような家庭だ。15歳になるフェリックスはまさに神童である。これほどまでの才能があろうとは……もはや既に一人の成熟した芸術家といっても過言ではない。彼の姉のファニーもまた、非凡な才能に恵まれている。

今日の午後、私はフェリックスに初めてのレッスンを行ったのだが……自分の隣に座る彼が、生徒ではなく一芸術家であるという事実に、しばらく呆然としてしまった。

神童、フェリックス・メンデルスゾーン／12歳

モシェレスは、そのころ既にロンドンのロイヤルフィルハーモニックの助言者だった。1825年に、モシェレスは音楽家を紹介、その中にはベートーヴェンやメンデルスゾーンも含まれていた♪

フェリックス・メンデルスゾーン

これが、フェリックス・メンデルスゾーンがロンドンに招待されロイヤルフィルで指揮をする1829年の訪英に繋がったのだった♪

Ignaz Moscheles  (23 May 1794 – 10 March 1870) 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.

Moscheles was born in Prague to an affluent German-speaking Jewish merchant family. His first name was originally Isaac. His father played the guitar and was keen for one of his children to become a musician. Initially his hopes fixed on Ignaz's sister, but when she demurred, her piano lessons were transferred to her brother. Ignaz developed an early passion for the piano music of Beethoven, which the Mozartean Bedřich Diviš Weber, his teacher at the Prague Conservatory, attempted to curb, urging him to focus on Bach, Mozart and Muzio Clementi.

After his father’s early death, Moscheles settled in 1808 in Vienna. His abilities were such that he was able to study in the city under Albrechtsberger for counterpoint and theory and Salieri for composition.  He was one of the leading virtuosi resident in Vienna during the 1814-1815 Congress of Vienna and it was at this time that he wrote his enormously popular virtuosic Alexander Variations, Op. 32, for piano and orchestra, which he later played throughout Europe. Here too he became a close friend of Meyerbeer and their extemporized piano-duets were highly acclaimed. Moscheles was also familiar with Hummel and Kalkbrenner. Among the virtuosi of the 1820s, Hummel, Kalkbrenner, Cramer, Herz and Weber were his most famous rivals.

Before that however in 1824 he had accepted an invitation to visit Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Berlin to give some lessons to his children Felix and Fanny. His comments on meeting them were: "This is a family the like of which I have never known. Felix, a boy of fifteen is a phenomenon. What are all prodigies compared with him? ...He is already a mature artist. His elder sister Fanny is also extraordinarily gifted." Shortly afterwards he wrote: "This afternoon... I gave Felix Mendelssohn his first lesson, without losing sight for a moment of the fact that I was sitting next to a master, not a pupil."