Biographical

Vladimir de Pachmann was born at Odessa, Russia, July 27, 1848. His first teacher was his father, who was a musical enthusiast and a fine performer upon the violin. The elder de Pachmann was a Professor of Law at the University of Vienna and at first did not desire to have his son become anything more than a cultured amateur. In his youth de Pachmann was largely self taught and aside from hearing great virtuosos at concerts and modeling his playing to some extent after theirs he had no teachers until 1866 when he went to the Vienna Conservatory to study with the then celebrated teacher, Joseph Dachs. Dachs was a concert pianist of the old school. Academic perfection was his goal and he could not understand such a pupil as de Pachmann who was able to get results by what seemed un-academic means. After one year with Dachs de Pachmann toured Russia with great success and since then has made repeated tours of the entire musical world. He never gave any serious attention to musical composition. As an interpreter of the works of Chopin no one in recent times has ever excelled de Pachmann, but he also gave numerous recitals showing a great breadth of style in the performances of works of the other great masters particularly Brahms and Liszt.

(The following conference was conducted in English, German, French and Italian.)