Kątski, Karol (EN)

Kątski Karol, *16 September 1815 Krakow, †27 August 1867 Paris, Polish violinist and composer, son of Grzegorz. From 1827 to 1829 he was a student of J. Bielawski at the Szkoła Główna Muzyki in Warsaw, and in 1829 Bianchi taught him violin for six months in St Petersburg. He gave his first concert when he was nearly 7 years old, together with his brother Antoni in Krakow, on 3 February 1822. In the same year he performed at least another three times in Krakow, and in 1823 in Warsaw. He also performed with his siblings in other Polish cities and, among others, in Vienna, St Petersburg, Moscow, Kyiv, Munich and Paris, where he lived permanently from 1836. Karol Kątski achieved success at the concerts of the Kątski siblings as a so-called “child prodigy”, but as an adult he did not have a great artistic career as a violinist. In Paris, he only at first performed in public, later became a music teacher and, for many years, was violinist in the Opéra-Comique orchestra. Karol Kątski was a member of music societies in Krakow and Lublin, as well as in Vienna and Munich. He composed a sextet, a quintet, and several string quartets, as well as shorter music pieces for violin and piano. These works were published mainly in Paris, some of them in Leipzig.