Karl Heinrich Barth was a noted German pianist and pedagogue.

Biography

He was born in Pillau, East Prussia

Prussia

Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

 (now Baltiysk

Baltiysk

Baltiysk , prior to 1945 known by its German name Pillau , is a seaport town and the administrative center of Baltiysky District of Kaliningrad Oblast, located on the northern part of the Vistula Spit, on the shore of the Strait of Baltiysk separating the Vistula Bay from the Gdańsk Bay. Baltiysk...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

). His teachers included Hans von Bülow

Hans von Bülow

Hans Guido Freiherr von Bülow was a German conductor, virtuoso pianist, and composer of the Romantic era. He was one of the most famous conductors of the 19th century, and his activity was critical for establishing the successes of several major composers of the time, including Richard...

, Hans von Bronsart

Hans Bronsart von Schellendorff

Hans Bronsart von Schellendorff was a classical musician and composer who studied under Franz Liszt....

 and Carl Tausig

Carl Tausig

Carl Tausig was a Polish virtuoso pianist, arranger and composer.-Life:Tausig was born in Warsaw to Jewish parents and received his first piano lessons from his father, pianist and composer Aloys Tausig, a student of Sigismond Thalberg. His father introduced him to Franz Liszt in Weimar at the...

. All three were leading musicians of the era and had close associations with Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

. Barth's first major position was as a professor of piano at the Stern Conservatory

Stern conservatory

The Stern Conservatory was a private music school in Berlin with many notable tutors and alumni.-History:It was originally founded in 1850 as the Berliner Musikschule by Julius Stern, Theodor Kullak and Adolf Bernhard Marx. Kullak withdrew from the conservatory in 1855 in order to create a new...

 in Berlin, where he also served as court pianist to Crown Prince Friedrich, later Kaiser Friedrich III

Frederick III, German Emperor

Frederick III was German Emperor and King of Prussia for 99 days in 1888, the Year of the Three Emperors. Friedrich Wilhelm Nikolaus Karl known informally as Fritz, was the only son of Emperor William I and was raised in his family's tradition of military service...

 of Prussia. In 1868, Barth took a position in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 teaching piano at the Royal Academy of Music

Royal Academy of Music

The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...

. From 1910 until his death, he taught at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, where his pupils included Arthur Rubinstein

Arthur Rubinstein

Arthur Rubinstein KBE was a Polish-American pianist. He received international acclaim for his performances of the music of a variety of composers...

, Wilhelm Kempff

Wilhelm Kempff

Wilhelm Walter Friedrich Kempff was a German pianist and composer. Although his repertory included Bach, Liszt, Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms, Kempff was particularly well-known for his interpretations of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert, both of whose complete sonatas he also...

 and Rose and Ottilie Sutro

Rose and Ottilie Sutro

Rose Sutro and Ottilie Sutro were American sisters who were notable as one of the first recognised duo-piano teams. It has been claimed they were the first such team, but Willi and Louis Thern preceded them by almost 30 years...

.

He frequently performed in public with the violinist, conductor and composer Joseph Joachim

Joseph Joachim

Joseph Joachim was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century.-Origins:...

 and with Joachim's wife, the singer Amalie Weiss. He also formed a piano trio with the violinist Heinrich Karl Hermann de Ahna and the cellist Robert Hausmann. The trio was well known and widely celebrated.

He died in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

in December 1922.