MaCDowell: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 And 2 / Witches' Dance

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Edward MacDowel1Piano Concerto No.1 in A minor, Op. 15Piano Concerto No.2 in D minor, Op. 23Witches' Dance for piano and orchestra Op. 17, No.2Romance for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 35 'The great young American Composer will not appearsuddenly out of the West with an immortal masterpiece under his arm but willcome instead out of a long line of lesser men - half geniuses perhaps - who'llprepare the way'Aaron Copland Edward MacDowel1 was born in New York in 1860. During hislifetime he was widely regarded as the most important American composer of theday. He had studied composition in Germany with Raff, was feted as a pianovirtuoso whose skills were admired by Liszt and eventually became Columbia University'sfirst Professor of Music. There he established a reputation as an inspiring andinnovative teacher, but in 1904 was forced to resign after disagreements over thecontents of the courses. Shortly afterwards he was run over in a Boston streetby a horse-drawn cab and sustained head injuries. The accident probably hastenedhis premature death at the age of 47. His widow established a retreat forartists and musicians at their summer house in Peterborough, New Hampshire andthe MacDowell Colony has since provided working space for generations of Americanmusicians including Virgil Thompson, Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland (whocomposed parts of Appalachian Spring there). MacDowell's reputation barely survived his death, despitethe immense popularity of miniatures like To a Wild Rose which can still befound in thousands of piano stools across America. As so often, the new avant gardehad little time for work by the preceding generation and MacDowell, in commonwith other Romantic composer/pianists like Rubinstein and Rachmaninov, sufferedthe backlash. In MacDowell's case, this neglect was compounded by criticismsthat his work possessed no particularly national style or innovation despiteits undoubted fine craftsmanship. For decades only the two piano concertosretained even a tentative foothold in the repertoire. Nearly a century later,however, his skilful and profoundly atmospheric music is finally beingrediscovered. As early as 1838, Ralph Waldo Emerson had complained that'the mark of American merit... seems to be a certain grace without grandeur,not new but derivative, a vase of fair outline but empty'. During the 1890sDvorak had called on American composers to turn to their ethnic folk musicroots for inspiration - i.e. plantation spirituals and songs of the Indiantribes - but nationalism for its own sake cut little ice with MacDowell. 'Purely national music has no place in art. What Negromelodies have to do with Americanism still remains a mystery to me. This inevitably meant continuing to draw from Europeanmodels. MacDowell's family came from Irish/Scottish roots. His mother hadencouraged the boy's prodigious talents, organized occasional lessons for himwith the great Venezuelan pianist Teresa Carreno and eventually took him