Biography (read more)
Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (5 September 1867 – 27 December 1944) was an American composer and pianist, born in Henniker, New Hampshire, and a musical prodigy who was composing by age four. Denied the chance to study in Europe, she trained largely on her own and through private study, and her 1885 marriage to Boston surgeon Henry Harris Aubrey Beach limited her public performances until his death in 1910. Her “Gaelic” Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony by an American woman to be performed by a major US orchestra.
Beach was the first successful American woman composer of large-scale concert music and left more than 300 published works, including chamber music such as the 1893 Romance for Violin and Piano, Op. 23. After her husband’s death she resumed touring as a pianist across Europe, and her music has undergone a significant revival in recent decades as a landmark of American Romanticism.
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Repertoire
Beach: Piano Quintet in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 67: III. Allegro agitato – Adagio come prima – Presto— Garrick Ohlsson
Performed by Garrick Ohlsson
Beach: Piano Quintet in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 67: I. Adagio – Allegro moderato— Garrick Ohlsson
Performed by Garrick Ohlsson
Beach: Piano Quintet in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 67: II. Adagio espressivo— Garrick Ohlsson
Performed by Garrick Ohlsson
3 Compositions, Op. 40: Berceuse (Version for cello and piano)— Steven Isserlis
Performed by Steven Isserlis