*1811 Frankfurt am Main - † 1885 Köln
Ferdinand Hiller, scion of a Frankfurt merchant family, learned to play the piano at an early age; aged only 10, he gave his first public performance at a Museumskonzert. He was a close friend of Felix Mendelssohn’s, and, later, also of Robert and Clara Schumann’s. In Vienna, he got to know Beethoven, Schubert, and Franz Grillparzer. In Paris, he regularly performed works by Bach and Beethoven and introduced them to the Parisian audience. There, he met several composers, such as Luigi Cherubini, Gioachino Rossini, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt and Frédéric Chopin.
In 1847, his career took him to Düsseldorf to work as a conductor, and, in 1850, to Cologne as the city’s music director, where he directed the Conservatory and the Gürzenichkonzerte. Hiller’s musical legacy is held by the Frankfurt University Library.
A catalogue of works is available in the catalogue of the German National Library as part of the International Music Score Library Project: http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Hiller,_Ferdinand or http://imslp.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Ferdinand_Hiller
Further information: Rudolf Bockholdt: Hiller, Ferdinand von. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). Vol. 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7, p. 152 f. Digital version: http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz32356.html