{{short description|Transylvanian composer}} {{Infobox person | name = Carl Filtsch | image = Carl Filtsch.jpg | caption = | birth_name = | birth_date = {{Birth date|1830|05|28|df=y}} | birth_place = Mühlbach, Transylvania, Austrian Empire | death_date = {{Death date and age|1845|05|11|1830|05|28|df=y}} | death_place = Venice, Austrian Empire | death_cause = | other_names = | known_for = | education = | employer = | occupation = | title = | height = | term = | predecessor = | successor = | party = | boards = | spouse = | partner = | children = | parents = | relatives = | signature = | website = | footnotes = }} thumb|263px|Carl Filtsch's grave at Venetian cemetery San Michele '''Carl Filtsch''' (28 May 1830 – 11 May 1845) was a Transylvanian pianist and composer. He was a child prodigy, and student of Frédéric Chopin.<ref name="Szulc">Szulc, Tad (1998). Chopin in Paris: the life and times of the romantic composer. Pg 301. Simon and Schuster, USA. {{ISBN|0-306-80933-8}}</ref>
==Life and education== Filtsch was born in Mühlbach (Sebeș), Austrian Empire (in present-day Romania). His father Joseph Filtsch, a Lutheran church pastor in Mühlbach, was his first piano teacher. His first public success came at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. Carl and his brother Joseph, also a child pianist, arrived in Paris on November 29, 1841, and immediately sought out Chopin to be Carl's teacher. Though Chopin almost never taught children, and rarely gave a student more than one lesson per week, he agreed to teach Carl, and gave him three lessons per week.
Considered Chopin's most talented pupil, Filtsch received high praise from Franz Liszt, Friedrich Wieck, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Ignaz Moscheles, the music critic Ludwig Rellstab, and fellow child prodigy, Anton Rubinstein. Filtsch began touring Europe on concert tours at the age of 13. After triumphant concerts in Paris, London, and Vienna, his promising career was cut short by an early death in Venice from tuberculosis. He is buried in the Protestant section of the San Michele cemetery.
==Quality of playing== According to numerous letters from Chopin and his acquaintances, Chopin considered Filtsch the most worthy interpreter of his music. A friend of Chopin, Ferdinand Denis, reported in an article in Vienna's ''Der Humorist'' in February 1843 that on one occasion after listening to Filtsch, Chopin exclaimed, "My God! What a child! Nobody has ever understood me as this child has...It is not imitation, it is the same sentiment, an instinct that makes him play without thinking as if it could not have been any other way. He plays almost all my compositions without having heard me [play them], without being shown the smallest thing - not exactly like me [because he has his own cachet], but certainly not less well."<ref name="Szulc"/>
==Recordings== * [https://web.archive.org/web/20160116050623/http://musikseminar.eu/cd-katalog.html Filtsch, Talberg, Liszt, Chopin: Piano music] - Leonhard Westermayr (CD MMS 2616) * (2010) [http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.572344 Mikuli, Teffelsen, Filtsch, Gutmann: Piano music] - Hubert Rutkowski (Naxos 8.572344) * (2011) [http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.572460 Mikuli, Teffelsen, Filtsch: Violin & piano music] - Voytek Proniewicz, Alexander Jakobidze-Gitman (Naxos 8.572460) * (2012) [http://www.cdaccord.com.pl/album.pl.html?acd=177 Tellefsen and Filtsch: Piano Concerto, Concert Piece, Overture] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304030640/http://www.cdaccord.com.pl/album.pl.html?acd=177 |date=2016-03-04 }} - Hubert Rutkowski, Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Lukasz Borowicz (Accord 177 2) *(2016) [http://www.kojimarokuon.com/disc/ALCD9161.html Carl Filtsch Piano Solo Pieces] - Chiyo Hagiwara (ALCD-9161)
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== * [http://www.filtsch-competition.de/rules/rules.htm The Annual Filtsch Piano Competition] * [http://www.freewebs.com/fjgajewski/ Konzertstueck by Carl Filtsch (1830-1845)] * [http://imslp.org/wiki/List_of_works_by_Carl_Filtsch Partial list of works]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Filtsch, Carl}} Category:Austrian classical composers Category:Austrian children Category:Austrian Lutherans Category:German people in the Austrian Empire Category:Composers from the Austrian Empire Category:Pianists from the Austrian Empire Category:Transylvanian Saxon people Category:1830 births Category:1845 deaths Category:Austrian classical pianists Category:Male classical pianists Category:Child classical musicians Category:Pupils of Frédéric Chopin Category:People from Sebeș Category:19th-century deaths from tuberculosis Category:19th-century classical composers Category:19th-century male composers Category:19th-century classical pianists Category:Burials at Isola di San Michele Category:19th-century male pianists