Teresa Carreñoaus romantic

María Teresa Carreño García de Sena (* 22 December 1853 in Caracas; † 12 June 1917 in New York) was a Venezuelan pianist and composer.

Life and work

Teresa Carreño was world-famous in her time and considered the most important pianist of the present day. She was often referred to as the “Empress of the Piano” and the “Valkyrie of the Piano”.

Her father, Manuel Antonio Carreño, was a Venezuelan politician, at times serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Finance. He was a talented amateur pianist and also the author of the Compendio del manual de urbanidad y buenas maneras, a kind of Spanish etiquette book widely known and widely published in the Spanish-speaking world. Her mother was Clorinda García de Sena y Toro, whose father was a musician. Her paternal grandfather, José Cayetano Carreño (1774-1836), was an important Venezuelan composer. She received her first piano lessons from her father. Later, the German-Venezuelan pianist Julio Hohené was her teacher.

In 1862, due to a coup d’état, the family emigrated from Venezuela to the USA, where Teresa received lessons from Louis Moreau Gottschalk in New York. On 28 November 1862 she gave her first concert in New York’s Irving Hall; as a nine-year-old she played for Abraham Lincoln at the White House in 1863.

In the autumn of 1866, her mother died of cholera, which was a heavy blow for the child. That same year she moved with her father to Spain, where she gave concerts in Madrid and Zaragoza. In Paris she received piano lessons from Anton Rubinstein and the Chopin pupil Georges Matthias. Concert tours throughout Europe followed.

From 1873 to 1875 she was married to the composer Émile Sauret, from 1876 to 1885 to the Italian baritone Giovanni Tagliapietra. This marriage produced their daughter Teresita Tagliapietra-Carreño on 24 December 1882, who also became an important pianist. Their son Giovanni was born on 7 January 1885.

In 1885 Teresa Carreño returned to Venezuela for the first time since her childhood emigration, where she opened an Italian opera in Caracas with Tagliapietra, in which she also appeared as a singer. Her performances as a pianist became less frequent for a while, she composed a lot and pursued other projects, such as opening a conservatoire in her home country.

A few years later, she went back to Europe. Her tour of Europe from 1889 to 1890 attracted great attention, and it was through this tour that she finally rose to the highest level of fame. During this tour, she made her debut in Berlin on 18 November 1889. Carreño enjoyed special veneration in Germany throughout her life.

She was married for the third time to Eugen d’Albert from September 1892 to October 1895, with whom she lived in the Villa Teresa, named after her, in the Saxon town of Kötitz, now Coswig. With D’Albert she had two more daughters, Eugenia (* 27 Sept. 1892) and Hertha (* 26 Sept. 1894). From 1902 she was married to Arturo Tagliapietra, the brother of her second husband, and lived in Berlin on Kurfürstendamm when she was not travelling. In addition to her concert tours through Europe, America and Australia, she emerged as a composer of brilliant piano pieces and also composed a string quartet.

Important pianists – such as Edward MacDowell (1861-1908) and Télémaque Lambrino (1878-1930) – emerged from her school. Rudolf Maria Breithaupt (1873-1945) dedicated his modern methodical piano work “Die natürliche Klaviertechnik der Meisterin Teresa Carreño” to her. Gioachino Rossini and Edvard Grieg also paid tribute to her.

Teresa Carreño recorded a total of 18 works for the Welte-Mignon reproduction piano on 2 April 1905, including a recording of Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata that was considered fantastic playing at the time and today. Several of the rolls of music for reproduction pianos she recorded in 1905 with works by Schumann, Liszt, Chopin and Beethoven as well as her own compositions are in the possession of the Freiburg University Library and the Augustinermuseum in Freiburg. Her daughter Teresita also recorded Welte-Mignon in 1906.

In April 1983, the music theatre Complejo Cultural Teresa Carreño (Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex), named after the artist, was opened in Caracas, one of the largest concert and theatre houses in Latin America.
Source Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_Carreño