"Walter Niemann was a pupil of his father, then of Humperdinck, and from 1898 at Leipzig Conservatory under Reinecke and at the University of Leipzig under Riemann, graduating with a dissertation on early ligatures and mensural music [...] Niemann was a prolific composer, especially for the piano (his opus numbers reach 189); at first influenced by Schumann and Brahms, he later admitted folksong and narrative elements, and drew too on impressionism and exoticism. He composed sonatas, educational music, dances and abstract works, but above all numerous character-pieces, often programmatic or portraying Nature. Niemann was an outspoken and sometimes vitriolic critic [...] He praised nationalist composers such as Pfitzner, Sibelius and MacDowell, while denouncing the ‘pathological’ and ‘sensuous’ music of Richard Strauss, Mahler and Schoenberg." (Rose Mauro, New Grove Online.)
The German-Dutch composer and pianist Julius Röntgen studied with Reinecke and Lachner and was a close associate of Grainger, Brahms, Grieg, Joachim, Nielsen and others.