Hermann Zilcher

Hermann Zilcher (18 August 1881 – 1 January 1948) was a German composer, pianist and conductor, and also a music teacher. His compositional oeuvre includes orchestral and choral works, two operas, chamber music and songs, études, piano works, and numerous works for accordion. As a music teacher, Zilcher also enjoyed an outstanding reputation. His students included, among others, Norbert Glanzberg, Karl Höller, Winfried Zillig, Kurt Eichhorn, Maria Landes-Hindemith, and Carl Orff. After the seizure of power by the Nazis, Zilcher became a member of the party, a fact for which he would later be criticized. Early life and education Zilcher received early piano lessons from his father, Paul Zilcher, who was known as a composer of didactic piano and chamber music. He studied from 1897 at the Dr. Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, piano with James Kwast, counterpoint and morphology with Iwan Knorr, and composition with Bernhard Scholz. At graduation, he was awarded the Mozart Prize. Career In 1901, Zilcher moved to Berlin, where he quickly established himself mainly as a pianist for singers and instrumentalists, with concert tours, which made him internationally known in the United States an