Biography
As a pianist Litolff received his earliest instruction from his father before advancing to lessons with Moscheles. Through these studies he formed connections with Fétis, Pape and Zimmerman, the last of whom urged him toward a life on the concert platform. That path proved immediately rewarding. After favorable appearances in Leipzig and Dresden he encountered the Bülow family, who helped him recover from a debilitating nervous condition. Appearances in Berlin followed by 1845, and by the next year Dutch audiences had taken him warmly to heart. His acquaintance with the publisher Meyer led, upon the latter’s death, to Litolff’s assumption of the firm and to his marriage with Meyer’s widow. Settled in Brunswick, he used the company to invigorate the city’s musical culture, drawing Berlioz, Liszt—on whom he exerted considerable influence—Bülow and Rubinstein. In 1858 he relocated to Paris, where he devoted himself chiefly to conducting and composition. Most of the resulting works were salon pieces for piano, marked by spontaneous invention, cohesive affective ideas, ternary designs and lyrical, unadorned melodies. His enduring reputation rests on the concertos symphoniques for piano and orchestra, the first such works to incorporate triangle and piccolo. Functioning in practice as symphonies with an obligatory keyboard part, these scores entrusted their principal themes to the orchestra. Liszt, struck by the innovation, dedicated his own Concerto No. 1 to Litolff.