If I pass him by who will praise Moritz Moszkowski? The musical scholars and critics are eternally busy – and quite right too – with their Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and Brahms. Little Moritz has no place among the great.’ So begins the brief essay (less than 200 words) on Moszkowski by JB Priestley, one of dozens of similar length that make up a book he called Delight, published in 1949, celebrating the people, events and objects that had given him lasting pleasure.

Moszkowski is a composer who has certainly given me, like Priestley, ‘delight, hours and hours of it, glittering like the Carnival at Nice and yet as innocent as a baby’s birthday’. The reason I bring his name to your attention is that in less than two years it will be the centenary of his death. Concert promoters, managers and record labels plan at least two years in advance. This is an early warning plea for them to start now! Because if they do not, it’s a pound to a penny that Moszkowski’s centenary will pass by unnoticed. The reasons for this are twofold, though connected. As Priestley observed, ‘No music of his will ever disturb or challenge the soul’ – an unforgiveable sin today. If there is no neurotic, wrist-slashing, introspective, self-indulgent misery to inflict on an audience, it has no place in the concert hall. Worse than that, the man wrote tunes! Tunes you can actually sing, hum, recall the next day and want to hear again and again. Contemporary composers, unable or unwilling to write melodies, resort to other means of musical expression. Bish‑bash-bosh is easier and gets commissions. Moszkowski’s language – melodic, extrovert, optimistic, expertly crafted – is sneered at by those who run the classical music world (‘My dear, such a lightweight’). Few young artists, often dissuaded by their teachers, bother to investigate (‘Don’t waste your time on that – get on with your Schubert’).

Moritz Moszkowski’s music fell out of fashion and never fully recovered (image: Tully Porter Collection)

‘In his day he had his triumphs, but every garland has been dust these many years’ (Priestley). To illustrate just how far Moszkowski’s stock has fallen, turn to the excellent BBC Proms Archive online, which lists every piece of music played in every Prom concert since 1895. Between that date and 1922, Moszkowski’s music featured in no fewer than 95 concerts. With a single exception, for over a century since then not one work by Moszkowski has been heard at the Proms (the exception, not part of the official programme, was the concert study Étincelles, played as an encore by Louis Schwizgebel in 2014). Why is music of which Henry Wood thought highly enough to include in 95 of his concerts deemed hors de combat today? What were the works that found favour with Sir Henry (he was knighted in 1911)? By far the most popular were four selections of the ballet music from Moszkowski’s 1892 opera Boabdil, heard on no fewer than 52 occasions. As far as his piano music is concerned, only three have ever been played (apart from the 2014 performance of Étincelles): the London premiere of Étude in D minor, Op 72 No 9, played by Mathilde Verne in 1903; the Étude in G flat major, Op 24 No 1, given in 1905 by Herbert Parsons and again in 1906 by Elsie Horne; and the Valse in E major, No 1 from the Trois Morceaux, Op 34, so memorably recorded by Arthur de Greef in 1929, played during the 1903 Proms season by one Mania Séguel, and repeated again in 1907 by no less than York Bowen.

Bizarrely, neither Moszkowski’s magnificent E major Piano Concerto nor his hardly less enjoyable Violin Concerto have ever been heard in a Proms season. Even his most popular work, the five Spanish Dances, Op 12, for piano duet (few piano stools in the land did not have them at some time) have been played just once – in the orchestral version by Moszkowski’s friend Philipp Scharwenka. That was in 1895.

He has never quite been forgotten. Many is the pianist who has taken delight in his myriad piano works. Seta Tanyel has recorded three discs of them. Ilana Vered made a superb recording of the 15 Études de virtuosité, Op 72; Michael Ponti gave us an entire LP of Moszkowski including the Piano Concerto; currently Ian Hobson is working his way through all the piano works (as a pianist) and all the orchestral works (as a conductor) for the Toccata label. It needs that extra push to get Moszkowski back above the salt with the other ‘sunshine composers’ (Rossini, Mendelssohn, Saint Saëns et al). So – back to Priestley again – ‘ignoring the giants who are always willing to take another bow, I crook my finger and, to the astonishment of the company, cry, “Maestro Moszkowski, forward!”