Constantin Ivanovich von Sternberg Elder was an American pianist, composer, and teacher. He toured extensively around Germany, Russia and Asia, as well as in the USA, where he first performed a number of new European music.
Background
Constantin was born on July 9, 1852 in St. Petersburg, Russia. After the death of his father, Ivan von Sternberg, when Constantin was three, and the remarriage of his mother, he was reared by his grandmother and a French governess in somewhat pampered fashion.
Education
At six he spoke four languages and was beginning the study of music. After a few years in the St. Petersburg Lutheran School, which he left at eleven, and a year at school in Weimar, Germany, he was taken to Leipzig in 1865 upon the recommendation of Franz Liszt to become a pupil of Ignaz Moscheles, Coccius, and Ernst Friedrich Richter at the conservatory.
In 1866, the cholera epidemic having sent the family to Dresden, he studied piano with Friedrich Wieck, father-in-law of Robert Schumann, who refused all payment for lessons.
Career
Upon returning to Leipzig, Sternberg directed an orchestra of forty and a chorus of twenty-four in Martha, Stradella, and Fra Diavolo, although he was not yet fifteen years old. His duties as conductor took him to Berlin, where in 1872 he formed a friendship with Moritz Moszkowski and, through Moszkowski, with Theodor Kullak. Under Kullak, who invited him to become his pupil and practically supported him for two years, he modernized his piano method and overcame the restrictions imposed by the more pedantic style of Moscheles.
In February 1875 he made his debut as a pianist in Berlin, and won the admiration and friendship of Anton Rubinstein. In the same year he was appointed court pianist at Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and head of the Academy Music School. At various times he acted as chorusmaster at the Stadt-Theater in Berlin, as summer conductor at Werzburg and Kissingen, and as conductor at the court opera in Neustrelitz. In addition he found time for a number of lessons with Franz Liszt.
In 1877 he was engaged for a tour as pianist with Madame Desiree Artit, a celebrated singer, and spent the season of 1877-78 in concerts with her in Europe, Russia, Siberia, Asia Minor, and Egypt. A performance he gave on March 22, 1880, before Kaiser Wilhelm I, led to engagements at embassies and palaces of the aristocracy, and to a tour of more than one hundred concerts in the United States, 1880-81.
His first tour was followed by further engagements in successive years, some of them undertaken in conjunction with August Wilhelmj, the violinist, and others with Minnie Hauk, the singer.
He had a position of importance in the musical life of America, principally as a teacher, although he was prominent also as a composer and pianist. His distinguished pupils included Olga Samaroff, Robert Armbruster, Gustave Becker, Robert Braun, and the modernistic composer, George Antheil.
Some of his music was played in concert by Josef Hofmann, Leopold Godowsky, Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, and other pianists. He wrote many articles for musical magazines; three autobiographical articles, "The Making of a Musician as Shown in the Reminiscences of Constantin von Sternberg, " appeared in the Musician, December 1913, and January and February 1914.
He died in Philadelphia.