Romance for Violin and Piano - Amy Beach

Here is "Romance for Violin and Piano" by American composer, "Mrs. H.H.A. Beach", also known as Amy Beach (1867-1944), with Christine Kharazian Michaelian at Greenspring Retirement Community in a Friday Morning Music Club recital on September 24.

According to the publishers, Edition Silvertrust, at http://www.editionsilvertrust.com/bea..., " Amy Beach's Romance for Violin and Piano came relatively early in her career. It was composed in 1893 and dedicated to the then famous American violinist Maud Powell. Beach and Powell premiered the work in the year that it was composed at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It is in three sections with the melodies shared by both players.
.... with regard to composition she was almost entirely self-taught.[!!!] ... she married a physician 24 years her senior, Dr.Henry Harris Aubrey Beach. During her lifetime, she was known neither by her maiden name nor her own given name but my the moniker “Mrs. H.H.A. Beach.” That this was so, one must remember that this was the practice at the time and even the most celebrated actresses in Britain and America were known by their husband’s names. Hence, all of her compositions appeared under the name of Mrs. H.H.A. Beach and it is only recently in more egalitarian times that she has finally become known under her own name, Amy Beach. For social propriety’s sake, her husband, as a member of Boston’s upper crust, insisted that she limit her concert performances to one a year. It was only after his death in 1910 that she embarked on a concert tour of both Europe and America. She wrote in most genres and was the first American woman to write a symphonic work. Ultimately, she was considered one of America’s leading composers and the only female composer to be ranked alongside of Arthur Foote, George Chadwick, Edward MacDowell, and Horatio Parker. Her writing is in a late Romantic idiom, showing the influence of Brahms and and Cesar Franck.

I hope you find this piece and our playing of it worthy, and they bring you, as they did us, some much needed “Respite”.

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