Emil Władysław Śmietański (1845-1886)

[SV340450843]

As the Österreichische Musiklexikon tells: "[Born in] 1845 Tarnów, Poland; † 29.8.1886 Mödling, Lower Austria. Pianist and composer. 1855–61 Education at the Kraków Music School with F. Mirecki; 1861–65 studies at E. Pirkhert's school in Vienna, where he taught from 1870 (Neues Musik-Institut). Between 1873 and 1886 he worked as a professor at the Horak Music School in Vienna. From 1865 he performed as a pianist in Vienna, as well as in Poland, Germany, England, and Belgium. He was especially appreciated as an interpreter of J. S. Bach and L. v. Beethoven. He composed numerous piano pieces, belonging to the so-called salon music genre, which were mostly published by the Viennese publishing houses Jägmayer and Wetzler."

A very praised pianist and composer, he recieved good reviews from Liszt, Brahms and his mentor Pirkhert. For the reason of his premature death, as many other composers, he is now very unsung. That's why I share his more little biography. That's why I uploaded all of his [available] works  to IMSLP and then a MuseScore user named Loginvovchyk noticed the pieces, he is now transcribing all his works for piano. I aslo have transcribed his Doppelfugue in D minor and his Piano Sonata in C major.

I want to mention, also, that his Grand Concert Op.25 is criminally underrated! I have practiced a few bars and it is nearly impossible to play it on tempo. The structure of the concerto i simple but it uses a lot of thrilling techniques and textures. Definitively a piece worthy to stand next to the Piano Concertos of Alkan, Bussoni, Rachmaninoff, Reger and Brahms as one of the most difficult piano concertos. Believe me, it's nearly impossible!

Check his pieces, scores and recordings at: https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Śmietański,_Emil ; https://www.musicaneo.com/sheetmusic/81090_emil_wladyslaw_smietanski/ ; https://musescore.com/artist/emil_wladyslaw_smietanski-733681 ; https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-enxhtC4OLTcMy5LUlw5iXuTakkqgfGg ; https://polishscores.org (you can render them as PDF or download the MIDI's, also is fair to say that they're are not reall high quality transcriptions)

[eschiss1]

Thanks! However: one can't infer composition date from dates on manuscripts, even when they're manuscript copies (like Les adieux) but even autograph manuscripts (there's, just for example, a Hiller op.67 symphony autograph on file dated rather after the work itself was published - clearly not composed then. Manuscript dates mean, as a rule, when the manuscript was written, not when the work was.)

(Also, filling in some of the publication dates using Hofmeisters Monatsbericht, etc. Cheers!!)

[SV340450843]

Oh, really?
Well, I need to admit that I thinked for some time that those dates on Dziedzcitwo Muzyki Polskiej were aproximates but some on them actually were taken from the manuscript scores.