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JAN LADISLAV DUSSEK (1760 - 1812)
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Jan Ladislav Dussek was born on February 12th 1760 in Caslav, Bohemia. Born into a family of musicians,
he took piano and organ lessons very early. The father Jan Josef Dussek (1738 - 1818) was organist and composer, the mother Veronika
was a harpist. He became a choirboy and attended the Jesuit elementary school in Iglau. He studied at the Charles University in
Prague for two years (1776-8).
At first Dusseks career developed as one would expect. A concert tour led him to Mechelen in Belgium,
where he settled for a while as a teacher. In 1782 he settled in Hamburg, having made a name for himself as a virtuoso. Here he
probably took lessons from C.P.E.Bach. But from then on his life was curiously eventful.
In 1783 Dussek was in St.Petersburg at the court of Caterina II. Here he had to leave because of
charges of plotting against the ruler. In the late eighties he played at the french court. So when the revolution came in 1789,
he had to flee because of his close connections with the nobility. And yet the fleeing wasn't over. He spent the nineties in
London. As viruoso he had lots of succes, but as businessman he was a failure and went bankrupt with his publishing house. And
in 1799 he fled his creditors and went back to Hamburg. He left behind his wife Sophia Corri and daughter.
From then on Dussek did what he did best. He played the piano and composed, mainly for the piano.
Shortly after the turn of the century, he started a triumphant tour of his native Bohemia. In 1804 he was engaged as master of
the chapel by Prince Louis Ferdinand of Preussia. Following a short period of employment at the court of Prince von Isenburg,
he spent the last five years of his life in Paris, in the service of the french statesman Charles Maurice Talleyrand.
Dussek died of gout on March 20th 1812, aged 52.
Dussek’s piano music clearly foreshadows the Romantic period. He is recognized as a pioneer of the
colorful, virtuosic sonorities of early nineteenth-century piano music. The composer and pianist Jan Václav Tomasek mentions that
Dussek was the first pianist to place the piano sideways on the concert podium. His works includes more than forty piano sonatas
(and a number of other keyboard pieces), eighteen piano concertos, nearly ninety accompanied keyboard sonatas, chamber music and
even an opera.
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