Daniel Steibelt

 Daniel Gottlieb Steibelt (October 22, 1765 – September 20 [O.S. September 8] 1823) was a German born pianist and composer who died in Saint Petersburg, Russia. His main works were composed in Paris and in London.
Daniel Steibelt was born in Berlin, and studied music with Johann Kirnberger before being forced by his father to join the Prussian army. Deserting, he began a nomadic career as a pianist before settling in 1790 in Paris, where he attained great popularity as a virtuoso by means of a piano sonata called La Coquette, which he composed for Marie Antoinette.[1] Also in Paris, his dramatic opera entitled Romeo et Juliette, which was later highly regarded by Hector Berlioz,[2] was produced at the Théâtre Feydeau in 1793. This is held by many to be his most original and artistically successful composition.

Steibelt began to share his time between Paris and London, where his piano-playing attracted great attention.[1] In 1797 he played in a concert of J. P. Salamon. In 1798 he produced his Concerto No. 3 in E containing a Storm Rondo characterized by extensive tremolos, which became very popular. In the following year Steibelt started on a professional tour in Germany; and, after playing with some success in Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, and Prague, he arrived at the end of March 1800 at Vienna, where he is reported to have challenged Beethoven to a trial of skill at the house of Count von Fries. The account was written 37 years later by Ferdinand Ries, who did not attend it and who was a student and a friend of Beethoven. Ries describes how Beethoven carried the day by improvising at length on a theme taken from the cello part of a new Steibelt piece, placed upside down on the music rack. Reportedly, Steibelt stormed outh the room, never to set foot in Vienna again.[3] Ries account, however, contains two factual errors.[4]

Following this supposed public humiliation Steibelt would have quitted his tour. (The date of his departure from Vienna is not known, while Beethoven did leave Vienna end of April or beginning of May: he played in Buda, Hungary, on 7 May.) Steibelt went again to Paris, where he organised the first performance of Joseph Haydn's oratorio The Creation, which took place on 24 Dec 1800 at the Opera House.[5] On his way to it, the First Consul Bonaparte narrowly escaped a bomb attack. Steibelt had just published one of his most accomplished sonatas, which he had dedicated to Bonaparte's wife, Josephine.[6] After a second stay in England (March 1802-March 1805), Steibelt came back to Paris. He celebrated Napoleon's triumph at Austerlitz with a Musical Interlude named La Fête de Mars, whose première was attended by Napoleon in person (4 Feb 1806).[7]

In 1808 he was invited by Tsar Alexander I to Saint Petersburg, succeeding François-Adrien Boieldieu as director of the French Opera in 1811.[1] He remained there for the rest of his life. In 1812, he composed The Conflagration of Moscow, a grand fantasy for piano dedicated to the Russian nation.

He generally ceased performing in 1814, but returned to the platform for his Concerto No. 8, which was premiered on March 16, 1820, in Saint Petersburg, and is notable for its choral finale. This was four years before Beethoven's unconventional Symphony No. 9, and was the only piano concerto ever written (excluding Beethoven's Choral Fantasy) with a part for a chorus until Henri Herz's 6th concerto, Op. 192 (1858) and Ferruccio Busoni's Piano Concerto (1904).[8]

Besides his dramatic music, Steibelt left behind him an enormous number of compositions, mostly for the piano. His playing was said to be brilliant, though lacking the higher qualities which characterized that of such contemporaries as Cramer and Muzio Clementi.[1] Despite this, his playing and compositional skills enabled him to build a career across Europe. Grove describes him as "extraordinarily vain, arrogant, discourteous, recklessly extravagant and even dishonest." Such harsh moral judgements are justified by some of the facts of Steibelt's life as they have come down to us.[9] These and similar attacks on his character must be viewed with caution if a correct image of Steibelt's personality is to be reconstructed.

At his best Steibelt is an imaginative composer with strong individuality. His operas Cendrillon (1810) and Romeo et Juliette (1793), all his piano concerti, his chamber music, a selection of his numerous sonatas (e.g. Op. 45 in E-flat and Op. 64 in G) and some piano pieces (caprices and preludes, studies Op. 78) are of a sufficient musical worth to be performed and enjoyed today.