musical understanding." Of the early and immature suite he could not
well write with much enthusiasm, though he found in it "life and
brightness."

In the following spring MacDowell made a more auspicious appearance,
and one which more justly disclosed his abilities as a composer,
when, on March 5, he played his second concerto, for the first time
in public, at an orchestral concert in Chickering Hall, New York,
under the direction of Mr. Theodore Thomas. His success was then
immediate and emphatic. Mr. Krehbiel, in the _Tribune_, praised the
concerto as "a splendid composition, so full of poetry, so full of
vigor, as to tempt the assertion that it must be placed at the head
of all works of its kind produced by either a native or adopted
citizen of America"; and he confessed to having "derived keener
pleasure from the work of the young American than from the
experienced and famous Russian"--Tchaikovsky, whose Fifth Symphony
was performed then for the first time in New York. "Several
enthusiastic and unquestionably sincere recalls," concluded the
writer, "were the tokens of gratitude and delight with which his
townspeople rewarded him." A month later MacDowell played the same
concerto in Boston, at a Symphony concert, under Mr. Gericke; his
performance of it evoked "rapt attention," and "the very heartiest of
plaudits, in which both orchestra and audience joined."

In the summer of that year (1889) MacDowell and his wife went abroad.
He had been invited to take part in an "American Concert" at the Paris
Exposition, and on July 12, under Mr. Van der Stucken's direction, he
played his second concerto.[4] After a short stay on the continent, he
returned with his wife to America.