Eugen d'Albert

Eugen (originally Eugène) Francois Charles d'Albert (10 April 1864 – 3 March 1932) was a Scottish-born German pianist and composer.

Educated in Britain, d'Albert showed early musical talent and, at the age of seventeen, he won a scholarship to study in Austria. Feeling a kinship with German culture and music, he soon emigrated to Germany, where he studied with Franz Liszt and began a career as a concert pianist. D'Albert repudiated his early training and upbringing in Scotland and considered himself German.

While pursuing his career as a pianist, d'Albert focused increasingly on composing, producing 21 operas and a considerable output of piano, vocal, chamber and orchestral works. His most successful opera was Tiefland, which premiered in Prague in 1903. His successful orchestral works included his cello concerto (1899), a symphony, two string quartets and two piano concertos. In 1907, d'Albert became the director of the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, where he exerted a wide influence on musical education in Germany. He also held the post of Kapellmeister to the Court of Weimar.

D'Albert was married six times, including to the pianist-singer Teresa Carreño, and was successively a British, German and Swiss citizen.

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 pianist, arranger and a prolific composer of salon music 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".

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