Henri Bertini

Henri J. Bertini was born in London in 1798 and died in Meylan (near Grenoble) in 1876. His brother, a pupil of Clementi, gave him his first piano lessons and he very quickly became a recognized virtuoso. On April 20th 1828 he performed his own transcription of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony for eight hands with Franz Liszt (the other two pianists […]

Anton Reicha

One of Beethoven’s more famous contemporaries, Anton Reicha was born on February 26th 1770 in Prague. Before his first birthday he lost his father, Simon. From the age of ten, he lived with his uncle Josef Reicha, a prominent cellist and composer at the court of the Öttingen-Wallersteins at Castle Harburg near Ansbach. In 1785, Josef Reicha and his family […]