Rudolf Heinrich Willmers

Rudolf Heinrich Willmers (31-10-1821 - 24-08-1878) Austrian composer of music and chess problems

Rudolf Heinrich Willmers was widely known as a brilliant player - the trill was his specialty - and composer... for the piano (source), but he also composed chess problems. "Musicians and Chess" reports the following anecdote:
While playing Schumann's 'Carnival' in a piano recital in Copenhagen, Willmers stopped suddenly, wrote on his cuff, and then continued. He explained afterwards that he had been struggling for a week to solve a difficult problem when the solution came to him in a flash. 'I had to jot it down to get it out of my head and let me concentrate entirely on my playing.'
Which, of course, seems completely natural to chess solvers or composers.

Rudolph Heinrich Willmers (* 30 October 1821 in Berlin; † 24 August 1878 in Vienna) was a German composer and pianist.

Life

Willmers grew up in Copenhagen and became a pupil of Johann Nepomuk Hummel in Weimar at the age of 13. At the beginning of 1836, he undertook his first concert tour, during which he met Robert Schumann in Leipzig in February, who published a "Testimonial of Honour" about him, in which he particularly emphasised "his musical talent in free fantasising". Schumann also corresponded with Willmers from 1837 to 1844.

From 1836 to 1838, he completed his studies with Friedrich Schneider in Dessau. He then undertook numerous concert tours through Germany, Austria and Scandinavia.

Willmers' extremely virtuoso playing was sometimes compared to that of Franz Liszt.

In 1864 he became a professor at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, a position he gave up in 1866. Since then he lived in Vienna, where he taught piano at the Horak Music School in Vienna-Wieden.[3] Willmers published many brilliant piano works, including a violin sonata (op. II).

He also made a name for himself as a chess composer and won the "American Problem Tournament" in 1857. Willmers was one of the founding members of the Vienna Chess Society in 1857

Source: de.wikipedia.org