Ernst Haberbier

Ernst Haberbier was a German composer, pianist and music teacher.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article on Ernst Haberbier.

From the period sources

Ernst Haberbier, an accomplished German pianist, was born in Königsberg in 1813 and received his early musical education from his father, an organist. By the age of eight, he was already performing fugues by Handel and Bach, according to Fétis’s Biographie universelle des musiciens (1883). In 1832, Haberbier moved to St. Petersburg, where he found success as a concert performer and teacher, eventually becoming court pianist in 1847. He undertook significant concert tours from 1850, playing in London and creating a sensation in Paris in 1852 with his “brilliant concerts” (A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 1900). Haberbier was noted for a technical peculiarity in his piano playing, which involved dividing rapid passages and figures between the two hands, a method he considered novel, though earlier masters like Scarlatti and Bach had employed similar techniques. He settled in Bergen, Norway, as a teacher in 1866, and died there suddenly in 1869 while performing at a concert. Among his compositions, the Etudes-Poésies, Op. 53, are particularly highlighted, with A Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1880) describing them as “beautiful” and deserving of “great and universal recognition.”