Romance for Violin and Piano, Op. 23

• Amy Beach composed this short chamber work in 1893.¹ 
• The piece is based on one of Beach’s art songs, “Sweetheart, Sigh No More,” Op. 14, No. 3.² Beach frequently used her own art songs as the basis for extended instrumental compositions, for example, in her Piano Concerto in c-sharp minor, Op. 45. 
• Beach dedicated this piece to American violinist Maud Powell.³ Powell was an influential turn-of-the century violinist. Another work dedicated to her was Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Violin Concerto in g minor, Op. 80.
• Beach and Powell played the premiere of this work at the Women’s Musical Congress, which took place on July 5-7, 1893  as part of the Chicago World’s Fair. The conference performances took place at the Memorial Art Palace, which would soon be renamed the Art Institute of Chicago. This piece was very well received and the audience demanded an encore. ⁴

“The selection was listened to in sympathetic silence…at the close tears glistened in many eyes.”

Contemporary review of the premiere from the Chicago Record.⁵ 

1. Adrienne Fried Block and E. Douglas Bomberger, “Beach [Cheney], Amy Marcy,” Grove Music Online (October 16, 2013), accessed August 11, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002248268.  
2. Adrienne Fried Block, Amy Beach: Passionate Victorian: The Life and Work of an American Composer, 1867-1944 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 82.
3. Amy Beach, Romance for Violin and Piano, Op. 23 (Boston: Arthur P. Schmidt, 1893).
4. Block, Amy Beach: Passionate Victorian, 83.
5. Quoted in Ibid.