MacDowell: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 etc. (Hyperion Romantic Piano Concerto 25)

Featuring

Seta Tanyel
Martyn Brabbins
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Edward Alexander MacDowell

Did you know?

1/7

Composer Biography

MacDowell suffered a tragic decline in health, including extreme irritability, depression, and eventually total insanity, after a public dispute with Columbia University's president and being hit by a hansom cab.

Cultural Impact

After MacDowell's death, his wife Marian established the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, which has since hosted over four thousand artists, including Aaron Copland and Thornton Wilder.

Composer Biography

MacDowell studied in Europe, notably at the Paris Conservatory where Debussy was a fellow student, and later at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt with Carl Heymann and Joachim Raff.

Composition History

MacDowell's Piano Concerto No. 1 was composed in just two weeks after his teacher, Joachim Raff, pressured him into writing it.

Composer's Artistic Vision

MacDowell, despite being American-born, was considered a 'thoroughly European composer' whose music was richly melodic and poetic, often compared to that of a gifted German.

Critical Reception

The Piano Concerto No. 2 in D minor was hailed by critics at its 1889 premiere as superior to Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, which was on the same program.

Composer Biography

Edward MacDowell, born in New York in 1860, began piano lessons around age eight with Latin-American teachers, including the Venezuelan virtuoso Teresa Carreño.