User:RannochbyGlencoe/Amy Beach

Chamber music
Franz Kneisel was a leading violinist in Boston and beyond, having been hired at about age 20 by Wilhelm Gericke, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as concertmaster of the orchestra. Soon after arriving in Boston, he formed the Kneisel String Quartet with three other string players of the Boston Symphony. (The Quartet lasted until 1917. Meantime Kneisel moved to New York in 1905.) In 1894 Beach had joined the Quartet in performing Robert Schumann's Quintet for piano and strings.

In January 1897 she played, with Franz Kneisel, in the premiere of her Sonata for Piano and Violin, which she had composed in the spring of 1896. Critical reception in New York was mixed, but in Europe, it was better: composer and pianist Teresa Carreño performed the piece with violinist Carl Halir in Berlin, October 1899 and wrote to Beach:"I assure you that I never had a greater pleasure in my life than the one I had in working out your beautiful sonata and having the good luck to bring it before the German public...(I)t really met with a decided success and this is said to the credit of the public."In 1900, with the Kneisel Quartet, Beach performed the Brahms quintet for Piano and Strings. Beach wrote her own Quintet for piano and strings, in F-sharp minor, in 1905. "During Beach's lifetime, the work had well over forty performances, in dozens of cities, over the radio, and by many string quartets. A large number of those performances were with the composer at the piano, most notably during a lengthy tour in 1916 and 1917 with the Kneisel Quartet." This was the 33rd and last season for the Quartet. Beach performed her Quintet with them in Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Variations on Balkan Themes, Beach's "longest and most important solo" piano work, was composed in 1904. It responded to revolts in the Balkans against the then ruling Ottoman Empire.