Natalia Janotha

Natalia Janotha (8 June 18569 June 1932) was a Polish pianist and composer. Biography Natalia Janotha was born in Warsaw, Poland, the daughter of Juliusz Janotha, who was a composer and teacher at the Music Institute in Warsaw. She started piano lessons with her father at a young age and later studied music in Berlin with Ernst Rudorff, Woldemar Bargiel, and Clara Schumann. She also may have had lessons from Johannes Brahms. She performed her first recital in 1868 and toured Europe as a concert pianist. She was known as an interpreter of the music of Chopin, whose sister was a very close friend of her mother’s; and she received advice from Chopin’s pupil Princess Czartoryska née Radziwill. In 1885 she became the Imperial Court pianist in Berlin. She also won notoriety as a mountain climber, sometimes wearing men’s trousers. In 1883 she became the first woman to ascend Gerlach, the highest mountain in the Carpathians. She lived in London for a few years, but was deported in 1915 owing to the political circumstances of World War I, because she was the German court pianist. Then, she emigrated to The Hague, where she served as accompanist to the dancer Angèle Sydow. She died in The Ha