Friederike Proch Benesch

Friderica Ernestina Theresia Proch Benesch, also known as Friederike Proch Benesch, (4 March 1805 – 23 February 1872), was a Czech pianist, piano teacher, and composer. She had a long concert career in Vienna, and for several years she was also active in what is now Slovenia. She was the first known woman to perform her own composition publicly in Ljubljana, and the first known woman to teach piano privately in Ljubljana in an official capacity (outside school institutions). She performed the then-very-popular Piano Concerto No. 2 in A minor by Johann Nepomuk Hummel. From 1923 until leaving Ljubljana she taught piano privately. Soon after the move she and her husband gave several concerts in Vienna. She performed mainly works by Carl Maria von Weber, Henri Herz, Friedrich Kalkbrenner, Ferdinand Ries and Theodor Döhler. She collaborated and performed with various Viennese musicians, including the harpist Therese Heilingmeyer, but above all with her husband and her brother. In Vienna she composed several works for piano.

Awards Honorary membership of the Philharmonic Society in Ljubljana (1824)