Wilhelm Würfel

Wilhelm Würfel, aka Wenzel Würfel (, ; May 6, 1790 - March 23, 1832) was a Czech composer, pianist and conductor. Life He was born in 1790 in Plaňany near Kolín in central Bohemia. His father was a schoolteacher. He studied piano with his mother. In 1807 he went to Prague where he studied with Václav Jan Tomášek. In 1815 he went to Warsaw where he was appointed a professor at the Warsaw Conservatory. He gave piano performances in Poland, Bohemia, Germany and Russia. In 1824 he returned to Prague and conducted his opera Rübezahl. From 1826 he stayed as a conductor in Vienna. He had a meeting with Beethoven just before he died in 1827. Wurfel died in Vienna, aged 41. His most famous pupil is said to be the Polish-French romantic composer Frédéric Chopin, who it is claimed studied with him at the Warsaw High School of Music between 1823-26. However, although Würfel was a friend of the Chopin family and may have given Chopin some guidance, he returned to his native Prague in 1824 and did not encounter Chopin thereafter. According to Jonathan Bellman in his book Chopin’s Polish Ballade (45), one of Wurfel’s programmatic pieces that Chopin must have known is the Grande fantaisie lugubre