James Kwast was a Dutch-German pianist and renowned teacher of many other notable pianists.
Background
Jacob James Kwast was born in Nijkerk, Netherlands, in 1852. After studies with his father and Ferdinand Böhme in his home country, he became a student of Carl Reinecke at the Leipzig Conservatory, and had later studies in Berlin under Theodor Kullak, and Brussels under Louis Brassin and François-Auguste Gevaert.
Career
He was also a minor composer and editors He participated in the first performance in England of Brahms’s Piano Trio in C minor, with Carl Fuchs and Carl Deichmann. Clara Schumann played her last public concert in Frankfurt on 12 March 1891.
The last work she played was Brahms"s Variations on a Theme by Haydn, in the piano-duet version, with Kwast as her partner.
He died in Berlin in 1927, aged 74. His reputation as a teacher reached far and wide.
The list of his students includes: Carl Friedberg Percy Grainger Ethel Leginska Walter Braunfels (whom he introduced to the music of Pfitzner) Otto Klemperer (who studied under Kwast at three institutions and credited him with the whole basis of his music development) Ilse Fromm-Michaels Walter Burle Marx, and Edith Weiss-Mann. Hermann Zilcher.