York Bowen

Widely admired in his lifetime as “the English Rachmaninoff”, York Bowen resembled his Russian contemporary in his double career: He was a composer with a warmly lyrical, late-Romantic style, and also an outstanding concert pianist. He was born in London in 1884, and his first piano lessons with his mother revealed a prodigious talent that won him a scholarship to London’s Royal Academy of Music at age 14. Bowen played the premieres of all four of his piano concertos (1903-29), and he completed two symphonies in 1902 and 1909. He also played the viola and horn to professional standard and served in the band of the Scots Guards during the First World War. Although his music’s unchanging Romanticism dropped out of fashion in the postwar years, Bowen continued to compose much chamber and piano music. A year before his death in 1961, he recorded a piano recital including some of his 24 Preludes (1938), showing that his playing was still remarkable for its technical mastery and beautiful singing tone.