Friedrich Wilhelm Michael Kalkbrenner was born on 7 November 1785, reportedly in a post chaise on his mother’s journey from Kassel to Berlin, which is why the birth could not be registered and the exact date is uncertain; his father, Christian Kalkbrenner, was about to be appointed Kapellmeister to the Queen Consort of Prussia. His father taught him, and at six he played a Haydn concerto to the Queen; at eight he spoke four languages. Educated at Potsdam and Rheinsberg, he kept a broad Berlin accent all his life. At the end of 1798 he entered the Paris Conservatoire in the piano class of Louis Adam — who unusually set his pupils Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart and Clementi — and studied harmony and composition with Charles Simon Catel alongside the future opera composer Ferdinand Hérold, taking second prize for piano in 1799 and first the following year. He settled in Paris and died there on 10 June 1849.

He wrote more than two hundred piano works along with concertos and operas, published a piano method in 1831 that stayed in print until the end of the century, and ran what has been called a factory for aspiring virtuosos, taking pupils from as far away as Cuba; Marie Pleyel, Marie Schauff and Camille-Marie Stamaty were among them, and through Stamaty his method reached Gottschalk and Saint-Saëns. He was also a piano manufacturer, and one of the few composers of the period to become genuinely rich. When Chopin arrived in Paris, Kalkbrenner suggested he enrol in one of his schools; Chopin dedicated his first piano concerto to him instead. His transcriptions of all nine Beethoven symphonies for solo piano were published by Giovanni Canti between 1842 and 1844, decades before Liszt’s. His reputation held until the late 1830s, when Chopin, Thalberg and Liszt passed him.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Kalkbrenner
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q170270