Artistic ability ran in the family: Clara was reputedly an "excellent pianist and singer,"[2] while Amy showed every sign of being a child prodigy.

[citation needed] Amy Beach began formal piano lessons with her mother at age six, and soon gave public recitals of works by Handel, Beethoven, and Chopin, as well as her own pieces.

One such recital was reviewed in arts journal The Folio, and multiple agents proposed concert tours for the young pianist, which her parents declined – a decision for which Beach was later grateful.

[9] They were advised there to enroll Amy in a European conservatory, but opted instead for local training, hiring Ernst Perabo and later Carl Baermann (himself a student of Franz Liszt) as piano teachers.

3 in G minor, to general acclaim: as biographer Fried Block comments, "[i]t is hard to imagine a more positive critical reaction to a debut," and her audience was "enthusiastic in the extreme.

[15] Beach would later recall one rehearsal for a Mendelssohn concerto in 1885, when the conductor slowed the orchestra during the last movement, attempting to go easy on the teenage soloist.

"[29] Composer George Whitefield Chadwick (1854–1931) wrote to Beach that he and his colleague Horatio Parker (1863–1919) had attended the Gaelic Symphony's premiere and much enjoyed it: "I always feel a thrill of pride myself whenever I hear a fine work by any of us, and as such you will have to be counted in, whether you [like it] or not – one of the boys.

"[30] These "boys" were a group of composers unofficially known as the Second New England School, and included not only Chadwick and Parker but also John Knowles Paine (1839–1926), Arthur Foote (1853–1937), and Edward MacDowell (1860–1908).

"[37] In 1912 she gradually resumed giving concerts, Her European debut was in Dresden, October 1912, playing her violin and piano sonata with violinist "Dr. Bülau," to favorable reviews.

From 1904 to 1943, Beach published numerous articles focusing on programming, preparation, and studying techniques for serious piano players, basing many of her findings on her own practice routine.

[61] In March 1929 she gave a concert to benefit the American Hospital in Rome, in which her song "The Year's at the Spring" was encored and a "large sum of money" was raised.

Of the over 300 works by Amy Beach which were published during her lifetime and included almost every genre, the largest category is her art songs and vocal chamber music.

[73] The third movement, Largo con dolore, was the most controversial among critics, with some praising its beauty and passionately evocative nature, while others derided its length as being too far extended and monotonous.

[74]Reviewers in Berlin were fairly positive in their response to the Sonata, hailing its technical development and brilliant use of the violin and piano as individual parts.

The primary theme throughout all three works, in fact, is borrowed from the last movement of the Brahms quintet, albeit adapted and reworked in a variety of ways.

Critics noted its aesthetically flexible imagination while adhering to traditional expectations, bringing a variety of expressive moods and tone colors to a work of substantial form.

[76] They also commented on the modernity and skill the work displayed in that it achieved a highly expressive nature and orchestral texture while maintaining the intimate, technically developed character of the chamber ensemble voicing.

Because of the timing of the piece's composition, there is some evidence that Beach may have been inspired to write the work as part of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge's chamber music competition in 1922.

The final work, completed in Rome, consists of a single movement divided into three sections, and thematically speaking, follows an arch form (A B C B1 A1).

[81] Beach integrates these borrowed tunes within a framework of Austro-Germanic extended quasi-tonality and dissonance, first through more straightforward statements of the melodies and then as assimilated into a horizontal harmonic structure.

The texture and harmony is fairly stark in places, lacking the lush Romanticism of her earlier works and representing more Modernist inclinations of a developing composer.

Composer and biographer Burnet Corwin Tuthill offered praise of it, saying that while it was unusual for Beach and lacked the emotionalism usually prevalent in her music, it demonstrated remarkable technical sophistication and skill in its handling of both string writing and engagement with thematic material that was not European in origin.

In fact, Beach's use of Inuit and Native American tunes became a marked feature in several of her other works, which she used as a means of bringing stylistic modernity to her sound through the appropriation and recontextualization of these melodies.

From career to piano technique advice, Beach readily provided her opinions in articles such as "To the Girl who Wants to Compose"[84] and "Emotion Versus Intellect in Music.

The symphony has received praise from modern critics, such as Andrew Achenbach of Gramophone, who in 2003 lauded the work for its "big heart, irresistible charm and confident progress.

"[87] In 2016, Jonathan Blumhofer of The Arts Fuse wrote: To my ears, it is by far the finest symphony by an American composer before Ives and, by a wide margin, better than a lot that came after him.

The manner in which she balanced content and form succeeds where her contemporaries like George Whitefield Chadwick, John Knowles Paine, and Horatio Parker so often came up short: somehow Beach’s Symphony is never daunted by the long shadows Brahms and Beethoven cast across the Atlantic.

[89] In 2000 Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle also lauded the composition, writing:Its four movements are packed with incident – beautifully shaped melodies (several of them drawn from her songs), a forthright rhythmic profile and a vivacious and sometimes contentious interplay between soloist and orchestra.

The piano part is as flashy and demanding as a virtuoso vehicle calls for, but there is also an element of poignancy about it – a sense of constraint that seems to shadow even the work's most extroverted passages.

[90]Andrew Achenbach of Gramophone similarly declared it "ambitious" and "singularly impressive... a rewarding achievement all round, full of brilliantly idiomatic solo writing ... lent further autobiographical intrigue by its assimilation of thematic material from three early songs".