Background
Filtsch was born in Mühlbach (Sebeș) in present-day Romania. His father, a Lutheran church pastor in Mühlbach, was his first piano teacher.
Filtsch was born in Mühlbach (Sebeș) in present-day Romania. His father, a Lutheran church pastor in Mühlbach, was his first piano teacher.
He was a child prodigy, and student of Frédéric Chopin. Though Chopin almost never taught children, and rarely gave a student more than one lesson per week, he agreed to teach Carl, and gave him three lessons per week. Filtsch began touring Europe on concert tours at the age of 13.
After triumphant concerts in Paris, London, and Vienna, his promising career was cut short by an early death in Venice from tuberculosis.
According to numerous letters from Chopin and his acquaintances, Chopin considered Filtsch the most worthy interpreter of his music What a child! Nobody has ever understood me as this child has..It is not imitation, it is the same sentiment, an instinct that makes him play without thinking as if it could not have been any other way.
He plays almost all my compositions without having heard me, without being shown the smallest thing - not exactly like me, but certainly not less well.".