Arthur Willner

Arthur Willner (5 March 18816 April 1959) was a Bohemian-German composer, pianist, and teacher who from 1938 lived and worked in the UK. Education and European career Willner was born in Turn () in Teplitz-Schönau, Bohemia, Austrian Empire. He attended the Leipzig Conservatory where he studied with Adolf Ruthardt (piano), Carl Reinecke (composition) and Carl Piutti (music theory). He then continued his studies at the Akademie der Tonkunst in Munich with Joseph Rheinberger (piano) and Ludwig Thuille (composition). In 1902 he secured his first significant academic post, as composition teacher and (from 1904) deputy director of the Stern Conservatory, Berlin. The position was secured after Gustav Hollaender heard his first string quartet. Fellow teachers there included Englebert Humperdink, Arnold Schoenberg and Ferrucio Busoni. Students he taught and influenced included Claudio Arrau, Otto Klemperer, Frederick Loewe, Edgar Varese, Kurt Weill and Stefan Wolpe. ) were living in the 7th district of Vienna, in the Zieglergasse. Exile in England On 15 March 1938 at the age of 57, Willner left Austria for Paris to escape the Anschluss; he moved to England later that year. After arriving in