April 10, 2011 <Back to Index>
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Eugen (originally Eugène) Francis Charles d'Albert (10 April 1864 – 3 March 1932) was a Scottish-born German pianist and composer. 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. D'Albert repudiated his early training and
upbringing in England and considered himself German. 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. His
most successful opera was Tiefland,
which
premiered
in Prague in 1903. His successful
orchestral works included his cello
concerto (1899),
a symphony,
two string
quartets and two piano
concertos. In 1907, d'Albert became the director of the Hochschule
für
Musik in Berlin,
where
he exerted a wide influence on musical education in Germany. He
also held the post of Kapellmeister to the Court of Weimar.
D'Albert
was married six times, including to the pianist-singer Teresa
Carreño, and was successively a British, German and Swiss citizen. D'Albert
was born in Glasgow,
Scotland,
to an English mother, Annie Rowell, and a German-born father
of French and Italian descent, Charles Louis Napoléon d'Albert
(1809 – 1886), whose ancestors included the composers Giuseppe
Matteo
Alberti and Domenico Alberti. D'Albert's father was a
dancer, pianist and music arranger who had been ballet-master at the King's
Theatre and at Covent
Garden. D'Albert was born when his
father was 55 years old. The
Musical
Times wrote
in 1904 that "This, and other circumstances, accounted for a certain
loneliness in the boy's home-life and the years of his childhood. He
was misunderstood, and 'cribbed, cabined, and confined' to such an
extent as to largely prejudice him against the country which gave him
birth." D'Albert
was raised in Glasgow and taught music by his father until he won a
scholarship to the new National Training School for Music (forerunner
of the Royal
College
of Music) in London, which he entered in 1876 at the age of
12. D'Albert studied at the
National Training School with Ernst
Pauer, Ebenezer
Prout, John
Stainer and Arthur
Sullivan. By the age of 14, he was winning public praise from The
Times as "a
bravura player of no mean order" in a concert in October 1878. 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." 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. He is also credited with
writing the overture to Gilbert
and
Sullivan's 1881 opera, Patience. For many
years, d’Albert dismissed his training and work during this period as
worthless. The Times wrote that he "was born and
educated in England, and won his earliest successes in England,
although, in a freak of boyish impetuosity, he repudiated some years
ago all connexion with this country, where, according to his own
account, he was born by mere accident and where he learnt nothing." In later years, however, he
modified his views: "The former prejudice which I had against England,
which several incidents aroused, has completely vanished since many
years."
In
1881, Hans
Richter invited
d’Albert to play his first Piano Concerto, which was "received with
enthusiasm". 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. D'Albert, retaining his
early enthusiasm for German culture and music ("hearing Tristan und
Isolde had a
greater influence on him than the education he received from his father
or... at the National Training School for Music") changed his first name from
Eugène to Eugen and emigrated to Germany, where he became a
pupil of the elderly Liszt in Weimar. In
Germany and Austria, d’Albert built a career as a pianist. Liszt called
him "the young Tausig",
and
d’Albert can be heard in an early recording of Liszt works. He
played his own Piano Concerto with the Vienna
Philharmonic
Orchestra in
1882, the youngest pianist who had appeared with the orchestra. D'Albert toured
extensively, including in the United
States from 1904
to
1905. His virtuoso technique was compared to that of Busoni. He was praised for his
playing of J.S.
Bach's preludes and fugues and of Beethoven's
sonatas. "As an exponent of
Beethoven, Eugen d'Albert has few, if any, equals." Gradually,
d’Albert's
work as a composer occupied his time more and more, and he
reduced his concert playing. He was the recipient of a
number of dedications, most notably of Richard
Strauss's Burleske
in
D minor, which he premiered in 1890. D'Albert
was a prolific composer. His output includes a large volume of
successful piano and chamber music and lieder.
He
also composed twenty-one operas,
in
a wide variety of styles, which premiered mostly in Germany. His
first, Der Rubin (1893) was an oriental
fantasy; Die Abreise (1898), which established
him as an opera composer in Germany, was a one-act domestic comedy; Kain (1900) was a setting of the
biblical story; and one of his last operas, Der Golem, was on a
traditional Jewish theme. His most successful opera
was his seventh, Tiefland,
which
premiered
in Prague in 1903. 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". 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." Another stage success was a comic
opera called Flauto
solo in
1905.
D'Albert's most successful orchestral works included his cello
concerto (1899),
a symphony,
two string
quartets and two piano
concertos. "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". D'Albert
edited critical editions of the scores of Beethoven and Bach,
transcribed Bach's organ works for the piano and wrote cadenzas for
Beethoven's piano concertos. In 1907, he succeeded Joseph
Joachim as
director
of the Hochschule
für
Musik in Berlin,
in
which capacity he had a wide influence on musical education in
Germany. He also held the post of Kapellmeister to the Court of Weimar. D'Albert's
friends
included
Richard Strauss, Hans
Pfitzner, Engelbert
Humperdinck, Ignatz
Waghalter and Gerhart
Hauptmann, the dramatist. He was married six times and had eight
children. The first wife was Louise Salingré. The second, from
1892 to 1895, was the Venezuelan pianist, singer and composer Teresa
Carreño, herself much married and considerably older than
d’Albert. D'Albert and Carreño were the subject of a famous
joke: "Come quick! Your children and my children are quarrelling again
with our children!" The line, however, has also
been attributed to others. His later wives were mezzo-soprano
Hermine
Finck, who originated the role of the witch in Humperdinck's Hänsel
und
Gretel; actress Ida Fulda; Friederike ("Fritzi") Jauner;
and Hilde Fels. His last companion was a mistress, Virginia Zanetti. In 1914,
d’Albert moved to Zürich and became a Swiss citizen.
He died in 1932 at the age of 69 in Riga, Latvia,
where
he had travelled for a divorce from his sixth wife. In the weeks
preceding his death, d'Albert was the subject of attacks by the press
in Riga concerning his personal life. D'Albert was buried in the
cemetery overlooking Lake
Lugano in Morcote,
Switzerland. |