Paul de Schlözer

Paul de Schlözer (1841 or 1842 – 1898) was an obscure Polish or Russian pianist and teacher of German descent. He was possibly also a composer, but the only two works attributed to him may have been written by Moritz Moszkowski.

His name is also seen as Paul Schlözer, Paul (de) Schlozer, Paul (de) Schloezer, Paul von Schlözer, Paweł Schlözer, Pyotr von Schlözer and Pavel Schletzer.

Very little is known about his life. He was born in 1841 or 1842. He became the piano accompanist to Pablo de Sarasate and to his own brother, the violinist Teodor (Fyodor) de Schlözer. In 1879 he taught at the Institute of Music in Warsaw, where he succeeded Juliusz Janotha. Ignacy Jan Paderewski mentions him in his letters, sometimes by disparaging references such as "Mr. Paul" and "Pablito". In c. 1892 he became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, where his most important pupil was the music historian Leonid Sabaneyev. On 3 February 1894, he performed the Chopin Cello Sonata with the visiting Czech cellist Hanuš Wihan, at the Conservatory.

He is unknown as a composer except for two études, Op. 1, for piano. The second of these, the Étude in A flat, Op. 1, No. 2, is considered one of the most difficult short piano pieces ever written – so difficult, that Sergei Rachmaninoff used it as his daily warm-up exercise, and it is generally attempted only by pianists of the calibre of Jorge Bolet and Stephen Hough. The 1941 recording by Eileen Joyce is considered not only unsurpassed, but one of the greatest piano recordings ever made. Eileen Joyce's recording of the piece can be heard on this YouTube link. The first recording, from 1907, was by the Franz Liszt pupil Vera Timanova.

Some historians believe that de Schlözer was not the composer of these études at all, and given their virtuosity, it is very intriguing why nothing else from his pen ever appeared, or why he did not achieve any sort of recognition as a major pianist himself. The story goes that they were in fact written by Moritz Moszkowski, who lost the manuscript to de Schlözer in a card game, and de Schlözer published them as his own works.^{[citation needed]} The similarities between de Schlözer’s Etude No. 2 in A flat, and the 11th of Moszkowski’s 15 Études de Virtuosité, Op. 72, also in A flat, are striking. However, it may be that these similarities themselves gave rise to the legend that the de Schlözer pieces were written by Moszkowski.

His niece Tatiana Fyodorovna Schlözer became Alexander Scriabin’s second wife. His nephew, Tatiana’s brother, was the music critic Boris de Schlözer.

Sources

• Ignacy Jan Paderewski: Letters to His Father and to Helena Górska, (A Selection), Ed. Małgorzata Perkowska-Waszek
• ed. Dmitry Feofanov, Dover Publications, "Rare Masterpieces of Russian Piano Music", notes
• Free scores by Paul de Schlözer at the International Music Score Library Project