Maud Powell
Maud Powell ( born August 22, 1867 in Peru, Illinois, † January 8, 1920 in Uniontown, Pennsylvania) was the first major violin virtuoso of American musical history.
Her father, Bramwell Powell, was a school supervisor in Aurora, Illinois, and her mother Minnie was a pianist and composer. From her Maud took her first piano lessons. Her uncle John Wesley Powell, a geographer and ethnologist, organized the first scientific exploration of the Grand Canyon and was the founder of the National Geographic Society.
Powell grew up in Aurora ( Illinois), where she received first violin lessons at the age of seven years. Two years later, she began teaching at William Lewis in Chicago 46 miles away, to which she traveled by train every Saturday. From 1881 she lived in Europe, where it was initially in the Leipzig Conservatory student of Henry Schradieck. From 1882 to 1883 she studied at the Conservatoire de Paris at Charles Dancla and after a concert tour of England 1884/85 with Joseph Joachim at the Berlin Academy of Music. My role model was the French violinist Camilla Urso.
In 1885 she made her debut in the U.S. with Max Bruch's Violin Concerto in G minor with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Theodore Thomas. In subsequent years, she gave concerts in the U.S., especially in culturally still less developed west. She played the U.S. premiere performances of many important works of world musical literature, the Violin Concerto by Tchaikovsky (1889 with the New York Symphony Orchestra under Walter Damrosch, the Violin Concerto in A minor, Op 53 by Dvorak (1893 ) and the Violin Concerto in D minor op. Sibelius 47 (1906 with the New York Philharmonic under Vasily Ilyich Safonov ). Besides she played works by American composers such as Marion Bauer, Victor Herbert, Cecil Burleigh, Edwin Grasse, John Alden Carpenter, Henry Holden Huss, Henry Rowe Shelley, Arthur Foote, Charles Wakefield Cadman and Grace White.
In 1893 she led the Romance for violin and piano by Amy Beach, who composed it and was dedicated to her. 1894 to 1895, she performed with the Maud Powell String Quartet and was the first woman to lead an existing string quartet made up of men.
From 1898 to 1905, they toured through the UK and continental Europe. She went here several times on John Philip Sousa and his band. In 1904 she was the first instrumentalist, which grossed recordings for Victor's Celebrity Artist Series. Your intake of Franz Drdlas Souvenir ( 1907) became a worldwide bestseller.
From 1907 to 1919 she undertook an annual concert tours throughout the United States, 1908 and 1909 have a private piano trio. In 1909 she played the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the New York Philharmonic under Gustav Mahler, 1912, the premiere of the violin concerto dedicated to her by Samuel Coleridge -Taylor. In 1914 she led Sibelius ' Violin Concerto on the Norfolk Festival conducted by the composer. During the First World War she also appeared before soldiers on in American and Canadian military camps.
After she collapsed in 1919 during a concert on the stage, she died on January 8, 1920 during the preparation for a concert a heart attack.
In 1986, the Maud Powell Society for Music and Education ( Maud Powell Foundation) was founded, the promotion of young people and women dedicated to the music. It publishes the journal The Maud Powell Signature and organized in Illinois, the Maud Powell Music Festival.