Eugen d'Albert

Eugen (originally Eugène) Francis Charles d’Albert (10 April 1864 – 3 March 1932) was a Scottish-born pianist and composer who immigrated to Germany and later to Switzerland. 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”. D’Albert was brought up in Glasgow and taught music by his father until he won a scholarship to the new National Training School for Music (forerunner of the Royal College of Music) in London, which he entered in 1876 at the age of 12. Also in 1880, d’Albert arranged the p