Pavel Pabst

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Pavel Pabst (1854-1897) was a pianist, composer, and Professor of Piano at Moscow Conservatory.

[edit] Life and career

Pabst was born Christian Georg Paul Pabst on 15 May 1854, into a family of highly gifted musicians in Koenigsberg, capital of East Prussia. The young Pabst had a fortuitous meeting with Anton Rubinstein when the great pianist/composer travelled to Koenigsberg as overseer of cultural programmes there. Pabst moved to Russia as a most accomplished pianist in 1878. In the autumn of that year he accepted an invitation from Nikolai Rubinstein to teach at the Moscow Conservatory.

Peter Tchaikovsky frequently attended concerts given by Pabst, and used to refer to Pavel, as he was now known, as "a pianist of divine elegance”, and "a pianist from God". Pabst became the greatest Professor of Piano at Moscow Conservatory, and his students carried the great tradition of Russian romanticism into the 20th century.

Until now Pabst has been known as a composer only for his piano transcriptions of the music for the ballet and opera by Peter Tchaikovsky. Indeed he was the sole appointee by Tchaikovsky to make such transcriptions, and edited Tchaikovsky's piano works for him. Tchaikovsky requested that he finger the piano score for his B-flat minor Concerto No. 1, one of the most popular piano concertos in the world today. He also fingered the Arensky Concerto, and was the soloist at its premiere. Pabst’s piano transcriptions were loved by the most outstanding pianists of the time, and were considered to be on a par with those by the great Franz Liszt himself.

[edit] Orchestral work

In 1885 he wrote his only orchestral work, the Piano Concerto in E-flat major. The score has only recently been discovered. It was lost following its first performances in St. Petersburg and Moscow, with Pabst as soloist, and with the great Anton Rubinstein conducting. Pabst, who died in Moscow on 9 June 1897. was one of the greatest pianists of his day, admired even by the great Franz Liszt. He and the young Sergei Rachmaninov performed many concerts together. Both Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov dedicated works to Pabst. Pabst was in illustrious company, and this is reflected in his Piano Concerto, the only work for full orchestra to be composed by him. It is an exquisite romantic work in three movements, lasting 33 minutes, full of wonderful tunes and a fiendishly difficult but lyrical solo part. 120 years after its premiere, Pabst's 'Lost Concerto' was performed by Panagiotis Trochopoulos and recorded at a concert given in Minsk on 19 April 2005 by the Belarusian State Academic Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Marius Stravinsky, and at last the Pabst Piano Concerto takes its rightful place among the great romantic musical works of the nineteenth century.