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Teresa Carreño

by Leigh Dawson on 2023-09-26T19:18:00-04:00 in Music | 0 Comments

By Talita Solis

Carreño at the piano, c.1862 in New York

Teresa Carreño was born in Caracas, Venezuela, December 22, 1853. She was a pianist, composer and singer. She began her musical studies at the age of six under her father, Manuel Antonio Carreño, an amateur musician and politician. In 1862, her family emigrated to New York City. The young Teresa took a handful of lessons from Louis Moreau Gottschalk. That year, she made her debut at Irving Hall, New York, at the age of 8. In 1863, Carreño performed for Abraham Lincoln at the White House.

In 1866, the family moved to Paris, where Carreño continued composing and performing with tours to England, Spain, and Holland. Carreño returned to the United States in the 1872–3 season for a tour with Carlotta Patti and Emile Sauret, whom she married in London in the summer of 1873.

She took lessons from Georges Mathias (a pupil of Frédéric Chopin) and from Anton Rubinstein. While on tour, Franz Liszt offered her lessons, but she declined. Carreño did not return to Venezuela until 1885, and only for a short period. In 1889, she returned to Europe for more touring, eventually settling in Berlin.

Carreño’s successful debut in Berlin in 1889 led to more tours throughout Europe, Australia, North and South Africa, and the Americas. From 1892 to 1895 she was married to Eugen d’Albert, performing with him on several occasions. Carreño toured the United States on six more occasions until 1916, when she established residence in New York. After tours in the fall and winter, she traveled in the spring of 1917 to Cuba, where she fell ill. Returning to New York, Carreño died on June 12, 1917, in her apartment in New York City, at the age of sixty-four.

The Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex in Caracas is named after her, and the Complex would go on to become the Venezuela Symphony Orchestra’s main performance hall. On one of its floors there is the Teresa Carreño piano, recovered by Rosario Marciano, an outstanding Venezuelan pianist who greatly admired Carreño’s works.

In 1919 her only book, “Possibilities of Tone Color by Artistic Use of Pedals” was published; she had evidently been working on it at the time of her death. The book is available online at the Hathi Trust digital library.

She composed approximately 80 works, most of them during her youth with the purpose of including them in her concerts. They reflect the influence of the style of the virtuoso composers, especially her Gottschalk Waltz, Op. 1, along with an assimilation of Venezuelan rhythmic and formal elements.

During her mature years, Carreño returned briefly to composition with works of a larger format, including her String Quartet in B minor and a Serenade for string orchestra. Recordings of her most famous works are available on our NAXOS Music Library database. The emotional depth of her compositions reflects her life experiences, turbulent years and failed marriages. You can also hear Carreño herself perform, on a piano roll recoding also available on Naxos.

Carreño was among the first female pianists to tour the United States, serving as a role model for new generations of American women who entered musical life as professional performers and composers. One of the most accomplished pianists of her day, the recordings that she left gives eloquent testimony to the elegance and refinement of her playing. Her nickname, the “Walküre of the Piano” encapsulates something of the high energy that she brought not only to her playing and composing but to life itself.

She performed several times at Henry Wood's promenade concerts. In his memoir, he wrote: “It is difficult to express adequately what all musicians felt about this great woman who looked like a queen among pianists - and played like a goddess. The instant she walked onto the platform her steady dignity held her audience who watched with riveted attention while she arranged the long train she habitually wore. Her masculine vigor of tone and touch and her marvelous precision on executing octave passages carried everyone completely away.”