James Kwast (23 November 1852 – 31 October 1927) was a Dutch-German pianist and renowned teacher of many other notable pianists. He was also a minor composer and editor.
He participated in the first performance in England of Brahms’s Piano Trio in C minor, with Carl Fuchs and Carl Deichmann.[2]
Clara Schumann played her last public concert in Frankfurt on 12 March 1891. The last work she played was Brahms's Variations on a Theme by Haydn, in the piano-duet version, with Kwast as her partner.[3]
He died in Berlin in 1927, aged 74.
Teacher
His reputation as a teacher reached far and wide. The list of his students includes:
He wrote a piano concerto and various piano pieces, as well as piano transcriptions of Bach organ works. He edited the keyboard works of Joseph Haydn.
Personal life
His first wife was Antonie (“Tony”), the daughter of Ferdinand Hiller. Their daughter Mimi Kwast married his pupil, the composer Hans Pfitzner.
He later married a pupil of his, Frieda Hodapp, who was a successful pianist. She was the dedicatee of Max Reger's F minor Concerto, which she premiered in 1910, and the soloist in the first Berlin performance of Busoni's Concertino, BV 292.[9] She also premiered Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Telemann, Op. 134, on 14 March 1915 at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. The work was dedicated to her husband.[10]
His brother was the conductor Jan Albert Kwast (Quast).
^Slonimsky, Nicolas (1978). "Zilcher, Hermann". Baker's Biographical dictionary of musicians (6th ed.). New York: Schirmer Books. p. 1946. ISBN0-02-870240-9.
^Beaumont, Antony (1985). Busoni the Composer. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 291. ISBN0253312701.
^Liner notes to Oryx Romantic 1824, recording by Hugo Steurer
Sources
Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed (1954), ed. Eric Blom, Vol IV, p. 880