Album Tracks:
01. Track One 02. Track Two 03. Track Three 04. Track Four 05. Track Five 06. Track Six 07. Track Seven 08. Track Eight 09. Track Nine 10. Track Ten 11. Track Eleven 12. Track Twelve 13. Track Thirteen 14. Track Fourteen
Biography:
Born and bred in the American South, American composer John Powell was the son of a Virginia schoolmaster and his wife, the latter being an amateur musician of some skill. Powell`s facility for the piano developed quickly, and by age 19 he had graduated from the University of Virginia. In 1901, Powell went to Europe to study piano with Frederic Charles Hahr, a veteran of Franz Liszt`s master classes. From 1904 - 1907 Powell continued his course of study with famed piano pedagogue Theodor Leschetizky. During these years in Europe, Powell undertook three massive piano sonatas, the Sonata teutonica, the Sonata psychologique, and the Sonata Noble, Op. 21. The Teutonica in its original form runs more than an hour. All three sonatas are conceived in a strongly Romantic, Lisztian milieu, forming the basis of Powell`s compositional approach. Powell`s High German-derived arch-Romanticism continued unchanged for the next six decades in spite of all the twentieth-century trends that emphasize the new. Powell made his debut as pianist in Berlin in 1908.
While abroad, Powell, a handsome southerner with faultless social graces, made contact with several influential figures in Europe, including novelist Joseph Conrad. Powell proposed setting the novel Heart of Darkness as an opera, an idea that left Conrad cold. However, Conrad did agree to the idea of representing the work as a fantasy for piano and orchestra. P ...
