1. Præludium.
2. Fugato.
3. Rhapsody.
4. Scherzino.
5. March.
6. Fantastic Dance.
Much of this music was composed in the makeshift studio of a German railway carriage, while the composer was travelling to and fro to give lessons, between Frankfort and Darmstadt and from one of these to Erbach-Fürstenau, the latter place entailing a typically tiring Continental journey. The suite, like its predecessor, the First Modern Suite for Pianoforte, Op. 10, was published at Leipzig by Breitkopf and Härtel on the recommendation of Liszt. The music is of little importance to-day, although it is melodious and well written. The opening Præludium foreshadows the composer's later regard for significance of expression, for it bears an explanatory quotation from Byron's Manfred. Teresa Carreño, the masculine woman pianist, from whom MacDowell had received one or two early lessons in pianoforte playing, performed the Suite in New York City on March 8th, 1884, and toured three movements of it in the following year, in other parts of the United States.
OPUS 15. FIRST CONCERTO, IN A MINOR, FOR PIANOFORTE AND ORCHESTRA.
Composed, Frankfort, 1882. First Published, 1885 (Breitkopf & Härtel).
Dedicated to Franz Liszt.