Emanuel Abraham Aguilar

Emanuel Abraham Aguilar (23 August 1824 – 18 February 1904), was an English concert pianist and composer of Portuguese parentage. Life Born in Clapham, London, Aguilar was the son of Sephardic Jewish refugees from Portugal who settled in London. His father was the city merchant Emanuel Aguilar (1787–1845) and his mother Sarah Diaz Fernandez (1787–1854). His sister was the novelist Grace Aguilar. He studied piano and composition in Frankfurt, and was the first to perform Chopin’s F minor Concerto there. In 1847 his sister, whose health was already failing her, visited him at his Frankfurt home and died there, aged 31. Returning to London in 1848 he established himself as a soloist and set himself up as a teacher - though he frequently returned to Germany for concerts (for instance at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig on 30 March 1848) and as a visiting composer, as for the premiere performance of his second symphony in 1851. From the 1850s Aguiar lived at 68 Upper Norton Street (now Bolsover Street) in Marylebone. Later addresses were 17 Gloucester Crescent in Paddington (from the 1870s), and at the lodging house 7 Weymouth Street in Marylebone (1901–1904). He married twice and was widowed