A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Klindworth, Karl
KLINDWORTH, Karl, one of the best of living musicians and pianists, whose reputation is sure to last though it was slow to rise, was born at Hanover on Sept. 25, 1830. In early youth he was an accomplished performer on the violin. From his 17th to his 19th year he acted as conductor to a travelling opera troupe; then he settled in Hanover and took to playing the piano and composing. In 1850 he went to Weimar to study pianoforte-playing under Liszt, and had Hans von Bülow, W. Mason, and Dyonis Pruckner as his fellow pupils. In 1854 he came to London, where he remained fourteen years, appearing in public at intervals as a pianist and conductor of orchestral concerts, but in the main living the quiet life of a student and teacher. He organised two series of three chamber concerts in the spring of 1861 and 62, and a series of three orchestral and vocal concerts in the summer of 1861 [App. p.692 "they were called the 'Musical Art-Union'"]. The most remarkable compositions brought forward at the latter were Rubinstein's 'Ocean' Symphony; Gade's 'Erl King's Daughter'; Cherubini's Requiem, No. 1; Schumann's P.F. Concerto. They were well carried out, but met with the usual fate of such enterprises in London, and were discontinued for want of capital. Since 1868 Klindworth has occupied the post of professor of the pianoforte at the Conservatorium of Moscow.
Foremost among the mass of good work done by Klindworth stand his pianoforte scores of Wagner's 'Der Ring des Nibelungen,' and his critical edition of Chopin; the latter beyond all praise for rare insight into the text and minute care bestowed on the presentation of it; the former quite wonderful for the fidelity with which the transcript is contrived to reflect Wagner's complicated orchestration. His arrangement of Schubert's Symphony in C major for two pianofortes, and the four-hand arrangement of Tschaikowsky's 'Poème symphonique Francesca da Rimini,' as also, amongst his original compositions, a very difficult and effective Polonaise-fantaisie for pianoforte, should be particularly mentioned. The manuscripts of a masterly rescoring of Chopin's Concerto in F minor, and a condensation and orchestration of C. V. Alkan's Concerto in G♯ minor (Etudes, op. 39), are well known to his friends.[ E. D. ]