Francesco Berger

Francesco Berger (10 June 1834 – 26 April 1933) was a pianist and composer. He was a piano teacher and a professor at the Royal Academy of Music. He is mostly remembered as the honorary secretary of the Philharmonic Society for 27 years. Life and career Berger was born in London on 10 June 1834 to Italian parents, but received British nationality as his father was a naturalized Briton. In 1848 he travelled to Trieste from where his father had originated. He wrote an opera (Il lazzarone, ossia La fortuna vien dormendo ) which was performed there when he was seventeen. He received much of his musical education in Germany, where he was taught by Moscheles in a strictly classical tradition, a style of play from which Chopin was later to be the first to break free of. He returned to England in 1855, and in 1864 he married one of the most renowned contraltos of the day, Annie Lascelles. Berger became a professor of music at the Royal Academy of Music and also taught at the Guildhall School. He composed many pieces of music over a long and industrious life. He became a great friend of Charles Dickens and frequently visited him at his house, Gads Hill Place. He wrote a piano primer, Musica