Biography of Eugene d'Albert
German Composer, Pianist, and Great Piano Interpreter
Brief biography of composer and pianist Eugene d'Albert, renowned piano interpreter of works by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Liszt.
Composer and pianist Eugene Francis Charles d'Albert (1864-1932), was German by adoption, born in Glasgow, Scotland, of Anglo-French parentage. Famous for his operas Tiefland and Die Abareise, he was also admired and renowned for his interpretation of the piano works of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Liszt, and even composers of his own day.
Through Richard Wagner, he was initially drawn to the theatre, but his choice of subjects and styles was diverse enough to justify Pfitzner’s description of him as an eclectic.
D'Albert had 6 marriages, something he was also known for, and stormy divorces; second wife was pianist Teresa Carreno.
Early Classical Music Training Years
His father taught him music until he won a scholarshio to the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London. There he studied under Arthur Sullivan, Ernst Pauer, John Stainer and Ebenezer Prout.
D'Albert arranged the piano reduction for Arthur Sullivan's vocal score of sacred drama The Martyr of Antioch, primarily to accompany the chorus in the rehearsal. He is also credited with writing the overture to Gilbert and Sullivan's 1881 opera Patience. During the same year, he won the Mendelssohn Scholarship.
D'Albert attended the New Music School in London, became a pupil of Franz Liszt in Weimar, and gained Liszt's support, becoming one of the great pianists.
During the First World War he gave up his British birth. He succeeded Joachim as director of Berlin Hochschule fur Musik (1907).
The Classical Composer
He wrote many charming character-pieces for piano, Sonata in F-sharp minor in 1893, and two piano concertos. He also composed a symphony and string quartets. But his greatest success was as composer of operas, both tragic (Tiefland, Prague 1903, the tale of a landowner’s lust, still popular in Germany) and comic (Die Abreise (The Departure), Frankfurt 1898; Flauto solo, 1905).
His other operas include Die tote Augen, Revolutionshochzeit (Revolutionary Wedding), Der Golem, and Mister Wu, incidentally the same title as the song by George Formby.
Eugene d'Albert also wrote more than 50 songs and 4 volumes of piano pieces.
Operas by d'Albert
- Der Rubin, 1893
- Ghismonda, 1895
- Gernot, 1897
- Die Abreise, 1898
- Kain, 1900
- Der Improvisator, 1902
- Tiefland, music drama, 1903
- Tragaldabas, comic opera 1907
- Die verschenkte Frau, comic opera 1912
- Die toten Augen, 1916
- Der Stier von Olivera, 1918
- Revolutionshochzeit, 1919
- Sirocco, 1921
- Mareike von Nymwegen, 1923
- Mister Wu, opera
Sources:
Dictionary of Composers and their Music by Eric Gilder, Sphere Reference (1987).
The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, edited by Stanley Sadie, Macmillan (1994).
The Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Alison Latham, OUP (2002).
