Beringer, Oscar

1844-

Distinguished contemporary pianist and eminent teacher, active in musical affairs in London. He was born in Baden, Germany, but was taken to London at the age of five, his father being a political refugee. Up to the age of nineteen, he received his tuition from an elder sister. At the age of sixteen he commenced giving a series of recitals at the Crystal Palace, and when he was seventeen made his first appearance at the world-renowned Saturday concerts of the Crystal Palace. From 1864 to 1866 he studied at Leipsic under Moscheles, Reinecke, Richter and Plaidy, and later on continued his studies at Berlin under Tausig, at whose school, in 1869, he was appointed professor. He returned to England, in 1871, where he met with great success at the Saturday concerts, the Philharmonic Musical Union, and various other well-known societies. In January, 1872, he went back to Leipsic to play at the Gewandhaus, returned again to England the following year and settled there permanently. In 1872 he founded, in London, the Academy for the Higher Development of Piano Playing, an institution highly successful until its close in 1897. In 1882 he played the solo part in Brahms' second Piano Concerto on the occasion of its first performance in England. In 1885 he was invited by the Royal Academy of Music to join their professorial staff, being elected to the Committee of Management in 1898. He has been a director of the Phil- harmonic Society for many years and, since 1900, has served on the Committee of Management of the Associated Board of the Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music. His published works include an Andante and Allegro for piano and orchestra, sonatinas for the piano, several songs, a largely used Tutor, and a book of Daily Technical Studies which has enjoyed continued success. In 1907 he gave a course of lectures at the Royal Academy of Music, embodying his experiences of fifty years' playing and teaching, which lecture he has recently enlarged and published in book form under that same title. His venture in founding a school for the higher development of piano-playing met with the highest and well deserved success, marking, as it did, the commencement in England of the modern school of piano-playing.