Richard Hoffman

Richard Hoffman was a pianist, teacher and composer born in Manchester in 1831 and who died in Mount Kisco, New York, in 1909. Although he was born in England, his career unfolded almost entirely in the United States, where he became a prominent figure in New York's musical life during the second half of the nineteenth century.

His training was undertaken chiefly by his father, who had studied with Hummel and Kalkbrenner. Lessons with Liszt, Moscheles or Rubinstein have been attributed to him, but these references are inaccurate. He emigrated to the United States in 1847 and began a relationship of some fifty years with the New York Philharmonic Society; his debut with the orchestra took place on 27 November, playing Mendelssohn's Concerto in G minor. During Jenny Lind's American tour in the early 1850s, he performed alongside her, and he also played works for two pianos with Gottschalk.

Hoffman was esteemed for his facility at sight-reading, his technical precision and the clarity of his phrasing. His repertoire embraced Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin and Mendelssohn.

As a composer he wrote more than one hundred original pieces and piano transcriptions, as well as some songs and sacred works. His salon-style pieces include La Gazelle (1858), Dixiana (1861), In Memoriam L.M.G. (1870), dedicated to Gottschalk, and the Cuban dance Chi-Ci Pipi Nini (1872). His memoirs, published by his wife in 1910, also contain a pedagogical essay from 1895 that reveals a serious conception of teaching, in which nuance and expression mattered as much as technique. Gottschalk, to whom Hoffman was very close, described him as a conscientious artist and a perfect musician.