Le Banjo

Louis Moreau Gottschalk, the son of a Jewish businessman and a Creole mother, was born in Louisiana, moved at the age of only 13 from New Orleans to Paris to receive an extensive musical education. He was not accepted at the Conservatoire on the grounds that America was a country of steam engines, not musicians. Nevertheless, Gottschalk continued his studies and entered the spotlight in 1945 with a concert in the ‘Salle Pleyel’, which Chopin also attended. Chopin was said to have predicted that Gottschalk would become the ‘King of pianists’, which was confirmed by his very successful career in Europe and America. Many of his pieces are characterized by Creole influences. In ‘Le Banjo’, composed and published by Schott in 1855 (plate number 14471), banjo techniques are virtuosically imitated on the piano. This encore piece, still popular today, concludes with a quote from Stephen Foster’s ‘Camptown Races’.