Alexander Raab

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Alexander Raab (1882–1958) was a Hungarian-American pianist and teacher. He was born in Győr, Hungary (also called Raab) and studied at the Vienna Conservatory with Hans Schmitt, Robert Fuchs, and Theodor Leschetizky, befriending Johannes Brahms along the way. He gave recitals with violinist Jan Kubelík in England, Russia, Germany, and France.

Raab moved to the United States in 1915 and became head of the piano department at the Chicago Musical College. He later settled in Berkeley, California, where he was regarded as one of the West Coast’s best piano teachers. He performed concertos with major orchestras, including the Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Minneapolis Symphony, and the London Symphony Orchestra. Leopold Godowsky dedicated his 1931 transcription of Henselt’s Etude in F-sharp major, Op. 2, No. 6, to Raab.

Raab’s students included Ernst Bacon, Vera Bradford, George J. Buelow, Muriel Kerr, Wanda Krasoff, Mortimer Markoff, Sumner Marshall, Robert Owens, and Allan Willman. Some of his pupils studied with other famous teachers such as Alfred Cortot, Nadia Boulanger, Rudolph Ganz, Percy Grainger, Ernest Hutcheson, and Paul Wells.

He recorded a small number of early Duo-Art and Welte Mignon piano rolls, featuring works by Chopin, Liszt, Mozart, Brahms, and other salon pieces. These recordings have been issued on CD alongside those by other renowned pianists like Cortot, Guiomar Novaes, Ignaz Friedman, Arthur Friedheim, Vladimir de Pachmann, Ferruccio Busoni, Josef Hofmann, and Harold Bauer.