Paul Pabst

Paul Pabst
(b Königsberg [now Kaliningrad], 27 May 1854; d Moscow, 9 June 1897). German pianist, teacher and composer.

He and his elder brother Louis (b Königsberg, 18 July 1846; d Moscow, after 1903) were sons of August Pabst (b Elberfeld, 30 May 1811; d Riga, 21 July 1885), an opera composer and latterly director of the Riga Conservatory. Whereas Louis spent several years in Australia, founding the Melbourne Academy of Music in 1887 (where Grainger was one of his pupils), Paul, who studied with Anton Door in Vienna and later with Liszt, settled in Russia. From 1878 until his premature death he taught with considerable success at the Moscow Conservatory. Among his pupils were Igumnov, Aleksandr Gol'denveyzer, Gedike, Beckman-Shcherbina, Buyukli, Konyus and Medtner. Though a noted interpreter of Schumann and Liszt, Paul Pabst is remembered today for a virtuoso paraphrase of Tchaikovsky's Yevgeny Onegin. His other compositions include a piano concerto and a trio. Louis Pabst, who also wrote several piano pieces, went to Russia in 1897 and two years later became a teacher at the music school of the Philharmonic Society in Moscow.