James Kwast

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.

Jacob James Kwast was born in Nijkerk, Netherlands, in 1852. After studies with his father and Ferdinand Böhme in his home country, he became a student of Carl Reinecke at the Leipzig Conservatory, and had later studies in Berlin under Theodor Kullak, and Brussels under Louis Brassin and François-Auguste Gevaert. He settled in Germany in 1883, initially as a teacher at the Cologne Conservatory, and later at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt and the Klindworth-Scharwenka (1903–06) and Stern conservatories in Berlin.

He participated in the first performance in England of Brahms’s Piano Trio in C minor, with Carl Fuchs and Carl Deichmann.

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.

He died in Berlin in 1927, aged 74.

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.

His first wife was Antonie (“Tony”), the daughter of Ferdinand Hiller. Their daughter Mimi Kwast married his pupil, the composer Hans Pfitzner.

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