Mark Hambourg

[9] In 1890 Shaw, hearing him play, felt that the Lyric Theatre was merely exploiting children, but late in 1891 he was admiring his performance of Bach at the Steinway Hall and wrote that, with suitable training, "this Russian lad might astonish the world some day".

Then, while still a student with Leschetizky, he stood in at short notice (on his master's recommendation) to play Liszt's Hungarian Fantasia under Felix Weingartner, in place of Sophie Menter, who was indisposed.

[11] In London in 1895, Henry Wood conducted a concert at St James's Hall in which Hambourg played three piano concerti.

[12] In 1895, Hambourg began his first world tour (aged 16), beginning in Australia, where in (Sydney) he was asked to prolong his stay by six weeks.

Returning to London, he deputized for Paderewski at a Philharmonic Society concert playing Anton Rubinstein's Piano Concerto No.

He went to the United States in the latter part of 1898, making his New York debut under William Gericke with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and going on to tour the US.

In 1906 he made a month-long concert visit to South Africa, taking his own piano by precarious means across the Veldt to one remote location.

[13] At the outbreak of World War I parts of the press circulated the scurrilous rumour that Hambourg was German, obliging him to prove his Russian origin and to show that he had been naturalized British for over twenty years.

On his return to London he gave recitals at the Aeolian Hall, of early English music from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, learning it by memory from the manuscript itself as the German Breitkopf edition was unavailable.