Tannhäuser de Richard Wagner

Adrien-Francois Servais was born on 6.6.1807 in Halle, Belgium and died there on 26.11.1866. From 1829 Servais taught cello in Brussels, where from 1848 he was a professor at the Conservatoire royal de musique. Concert tours across Europe earned him a high reputation as a virtuoso performer: he was described by Berlioz as the ‘Paganini of the cello’. The piano accompaniment is by the Belgian pianist Jacques Mathieu Joseph Gregoir (Grégoir), who was born in Antwerp on 19.1.1817 and died in Brussels on 29.10.1876. He studied with Henri Herz and Christian Rummel, both of whom worked with Schott as composers. Gregoir was a successful piano virtuoso and published several piano works with Schott. Together with Servais he made a collection of thirty arrangements of famous operatic melodies in the series Collection des Duos concertants, including works by Bellini, Mozart, Wagner und Verdi. The piano accompaniment here demands very full chords and can in places be difficult to play: as with a piano reduction, it can be simplified somewhat by leaving out a few notes here and there. The Duo brillant No. 10 on themes from Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser was published in 1861 (plate no. 16412).