Maud Powell

Maud Powell, 1919

Maud Powell (born August 22, 1867 in Peru , Illinois , † January 8, 1920 in Uniontown , Pennsylvania ) was the first major violin virtuoso in American music history.

Her father, Bramwell Powell, was a school supervisor in Aurora, Illinois, and her mother, Minnie, was a pianist and composer. Maud received his first piano lessons from her. 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 her first violin lessons at the age of seven. Two years later, she began teaching with William Lewis in Chicago , 46 miles away , to which she traveled by train every Saturday. From 1881 she stayed in Europe, where she was initially a student of Henry Schradieck at the Leipzig Conservatory . From 1882 to 1883 she studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Charles Dancla and after a concert tour through England in 1884/85 with Joseph Joachim at the Berlin Music Academy. Her great role model was the French violinist Camilla Urso .

In 1885 she made her US debut with Max Bruch's Violin Concerto in G minor with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Theodore Thomas . In the following years she gave concerts in the USA, especially in the culturally undeveloped West. She played the US premieres of many important works of the musical world 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 D minor violin concerto op. 47 by Sibelius (1906 with the New York Philharmonic under Vasily Ilyich Safonov ). She also 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 performed the Romance for violin and piano with Amy Beach , which she composed and dedicated to her. From 1894 to 1895 she performed with the Maud Powell String Quartet , making her the first woman to lead a male string quartet.

From 1898 to 1905 she went on concert tours through Great Britain and continental Europe. She also performed here several times with John Philip Sousa and his band. In 1904 she was the first female instrumentalist to make recordings for Victor's Celebrity Artist Series . Her recording of Franz Drdla's souvenir (1907) became a world bestseller.

From 1907 to 1919 she made annual concert tours through the USA, in 1908 and 1909 also with her own piano trio. In 1909 she played Beethoven's violin concerto with the New York Philharmonic under Gustav Mahler , and in 1912 the world premiere of the violin concerto dedicated to her by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor . In 1914 she performed Sibelius' Violin Concerto at the Norfolk Festival under the direction of the composer. During the First World War, she also performed in front of soldiers in American and Canadian military camps.

After she had collapsed on stage during a concert in 1919, she died of a heart attack on January 8, 1920 while preparing for a concert.

In 1986 the Maud Powell Society for Music and Education ( Maud Powell Foundation ) was founded, which is dedicated to the advancement of young people and women in music. She publishes The Maud Powell Signature magazine and organizes the Maud Powell Music Festival in Illinois .

literature

• Karen A. Shaffer: Maud Powell: Legendary American Violinist . MPF Publications, Arlington, VA 1994. ISBN 978-1-8858-2400-4 .

Web links

Commons : Maud Powell  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Works by Maud Powell in the catalog of the German National Library
• Maud Powell Society website