Biography
D'Albert was born at 4 Crescent Place, 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."
Read more about this topic: Eugen D'Albert
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