Look Who it Was Random video

John Orth: Allegro brillante, Op.16 No.1

742 views · Published 27 September 2015 · 2:34 · Indexed 22 October 2026

Channel: PSearPianist · 2015 · Music

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Phillip Sear plays a very up-front piece by the German-American composer John Orth (1850-1932).
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The composer, pianist and organist John Orth (1850-1932) was born in Bavaria, but emigrated to the USA as a baby.  He returned to Germany for his music study, where his impressive list of teachers included Liszt, Kullak and Philipp Scharwenka.  Back in America, he lived and taught piano in Boston (including a spell at the New England Conservatory), and lectured on his experiences at Liszt's classes in Weimar.  This piece comes from a set of six piano pieces, published in Boston in 1916.  Curiously, his opus 15 was published in 1905, so he seems to have taken quite a compositional break (he was not particularly prolific by the standards of his time!).  Each piece was dedicated to a different person (probably all pupils), and this one is dedicated to Gwendoline Veale, a pianist from Winthrop, Boston.  It is headed by an appropriate (but unattributed) quotation from Sir Walter Scott's 'The Lady of the Lake' (canto 1, stanza 21):

"Forward and frolic,
Glee was there, 
The will to do,
The soul to dare."

Actually, Orth (or his publisher) misspell the final line as "The souls to dare"!

Thumbnail image created with Wombo Dream ( t.ly/zhJa ).
#americanmusic #walterscott #allegro 
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Played by Phillip Sear
http://www.psear.co.uk (Email:  [email protected]  
WhatsApp: http://wa.me/441444483794 ) TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@pianogems

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