Credits:

Marie-Luise Bodendorff Xenia Kandel Frederiksen

Description:

Friedrich Kuhlau was born in Germany and endured the hardship of losing sight in one eye during his childhood. In 1810, he fled conscription into Napoleons army and moved to Denmark, where he lived out the rest of his life. His works carry on the tradition of German music, and in Denmark he enjoyed immense popularity as Beethovens greatest interpreter and successor. In Japan, he is also well-known as the composer of the *Sonatina Album*, a guidebook for piano students. An accomplished pianist himself, Kuhlau drew inspiration from the early Romantic movement and left behind numerous works that make full use of the pianos rich, natural resonance. Among these, he had a particular fondness for four-hand piano pieces, in which two people play a single piano; he composed numerous works that, in addition to their social and educational appeal, are filled with dramat