Eugen d'Albert

Eugen (originally Eugène) Francis Charles d'Albert (10 April 1864 – 3 March 1932) was a Scottish-born pianist and composer who emigrated to Germany.

[1] Educated in Britain, d'Albert showed early musical talent and, at the age of seventeen, he won a scholarship to study in Austria.

Feeling a kinship with German culture and music, he soon emigrated to Germany, where he studied with Franz Liszt and began a career as a concert pianist.

While pursuing his career as a pianist, d'Albert focused increasingly on composing, producing 21 operas and a considerable output of piano, vocal, chamber and orchestral works.

[3] D'Albert's father was a pianist, arranger and a prolific composer of salon music[4] who had been ballet-master at the King's Theatre and at Covent Garden.

He played Schumann's Piano Concerto at the Crystal Palace in 1880, receiving more encouragement from The Times: "A finer rendering of the work has seldom been heard.

"[7][8] Also in 1880, d'Albert arranged the piano reduction for the vocal score of Sullivan's sacred music drama The Martyr of Antioch, to accompany the chorus in rehearsal.

[13] In the same year d'Albert won the Mendelssohn Scholarship, enabling him to study in Vienna, where he met Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt and other important musicians who influenced his style.

When Thomas Beecham introduced the opera to London, The Times observed, "the scoring owes more than a little to the discipline of Sullivan; there is also a curiously English fragrance".

[17] Tiefland played in opera houses throughout the world and has retained a place in the standard German and Austrian repertoire, with a production at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, in November 2007.

According to biographer Hugh Macdonald, it "provides a link between Italian verismo and German expressionist opera, although the orchestral textures recall a more Wagnerian language.

"Though not a composer of profound originality ... he had an unfailing sense of dramatic appropriateness and all the resources of a symphonic technique to give it expression and was thus able to achieve success in so many styles".

[16] D'Albert's friends included Richard Strauss, Hans Pfitzner, Engelbert Humperdinck, Ignatz Waghalter and Gerhart Hauptmann, the dramatist.

His later wives were soprano Hermine Finck, who originated the role of the witch in Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel; actress Ida Fulda; Friederike ("Fritzi") Jauner; and Hilde Fels.

Perhaps surprisingly, his teacher Liszt is not strongly represented among d'Albert's recordings, though he committed "Au bord d'une source" from Années de pèlerinage (1st year) to disc in 1916.