Józef Wieniawski was born in Lublin on 23 May 1837, the younger brother of the violinist Henryk Wieniawski. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Pierre Zimmerman and Antoine François Marmontel from 1847 to 1850, and in 1855 a scholarship from the Tsar took him to Liszt at Weimar, followed by two years of theory in Berlin with Adolf Bernhard Marx. After touring as his brother’s partner between 1851 and 1853 he set out on his own career as a virtuoso. Back in Paris he became friendly with Rossini, Gounod, Berlioz and Wagner, was taken up by the imperial court and became a favourite of Napoleon III, then moved to Moscow and joined the piano faculty of the new conservatory founded in 1866. He lived in Brussels from 1902 — despite what many sources say, he was never a professor at its Royal Conservatory — and died there on 11 November 1912, aged seventy-five.

By Liszt’s account he was the first pianist after Liszt himself to play all of Chopin’s études in public, and he appeared with Liszt in Paris, London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Brussels, Leipzig and Amsterdam. He programmed Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Weber and Liszt alongside his own works, among them the G minor Piano Concerto, and kept contemporary Polish music in his repertoire — Moniuszko, Moszkowski, Tausig, Żeleński, Antoni Stolpe, Edouard Wolff. As a chamber player he worked with Sarasate, Vieuxtemps, Ysaÿe, Hubay, Auer, Joachim, Piatti, Paderewski, Diémer, Pauline Viardot and Marcella Sembrich. He wrote a symphony, a piano concerto, a piano sonata, twenty-four études, two concert études, a ballade and polonaises. Asked late in life how long he meant to go on serving music, he answered: as long as I remain young.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zef_Wieniawski
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1319981