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Born in Prague in 1794, Ignaz Moscheles received his first musical training in his native city, including with Friedrich Dionys Weber. In 1808 he moved to Vienna; he stayed here (apart from smaller concert tours) until 1820 and continued his theoretical training with Albrechtsberger and Salieri. He was soon one of the most popular pianists and teachers in Vienna. From his encounters with Clementi, Spohr and many others. the one with Beethoven was particularly significant, under whose guidance he made the first piano reduction of Fidelio in 1814.
From 1820 he lived on a concert tour, in 1824 he met the young Felix Mendelssohn in Berlin and taught him. He later moved to London and from 1832 to 1841 was Professor at the Royal Academy of Music and Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Society.
In 1846, he followed Mendelssohn's request to take over the "superintendent of pianoforte studies, training in performance and (of) pianoforte composition" at the Leipzig Conservatory.
Moscheles died in Leipzig in 1870, where a street still commemorates him today.
Unfortunately, the compositional work of Moschele is rarely present in concert life today. Moscheles composed the present Rondo brilliant for horn while he was still in Vienna in 1816. In 1815, he played Beethoven's Sonata op. 17 for horn and piano with the horn player Hradetzky in a chamber music concert. Perhaps this was the occasion for the brilliant Rondo presented here.
