Pavel Pabst

Paul or Pavel Avgustovich Pabst (; born Christian Georg Paul Pabst; 15 May 1854 – 9 June 1897) was a German and Russian pianist, composer, and professor of piano at the Moscow Conservatory.

Life and career Pabst was born Christian Georg Paul Pabst in 1854, into a family of musicians in Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia (present-day Kaliningrad, Russia). He studied piano with his father and then in Vienna with Anton Door and in Weimar with Franz Liszt. The young Pabst had a fortuitous meeting with Anton Rubinstein when he travelled to Königsberg as overseer of cultural programmes there.

Pabst moved to Riga, then in the Russian Empire, as an accomplished pianist in 1875. has issued, as part of its CD set "The Dawn of Recording: The Julius Block Cylinders," more than 26 minutes of recordings of Paul Pabst as a performer, both on solo piano and as part of a piano duet (with Sergei Taneyev). These are the only known recordings of Pabst as a performer, and were made in 1892 and 1895. They include music by Chopin and Schumann, parts of Arensky's Suite No. 2 for Two Pianos, Op. 23, and Pabst's arrangements of music by Chopin and Tchaikovsky, as well as a composition by Pabst.

Original compositions In 1885 he wrote his only orchestral work, the Piano Concerto in E-flat major. Its first performances were in St. Petersburg and Moscow, with Pabst as soloist, and with Anton Rubinstein conducting. The score was then lost, but has since been discovered. Pabst's Piano Concerto is a virtuoso showpiece in three movements, lasting 33 minutes, full of wonderful tunes and a fiendishly difficult but lyrical solo part.

On 19 April 2005, 120 years after its premiere, Pabst's 'Lost Concerto' was performed by Panagiotis Trochopoulos at a concert given in Minsk by the Belarusian State Academic Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Marius Stravinsky. A live recording was made by producer David Kent-Watson, and filmed for the documentary 'The Lost Concerto'. This live recording was used for the world premiere CD release of Pavel Pabst's Piano Concerto on Cameo Classics CC9033CD. A second recording was released by the Danacord label in 2008, with Oleg Marshev as the soloist.

Pabst also wrote a Trio in A major for piano, violin and cello, dedicated to Anton Rubinstein.