to a popular prima donna at the opera. Again and again he had to get
up and bow after every movement of his concerto; again and again was
he recalled at the close ... For once a prophet has had great honour
in his own country ... He played with that splendid kind of virtuosity
which makes one forget the technique." Concerning the concerto, Mr.
W.J. Henderson wrote (in the _Times_) that it was difficult to speak
of it "in terms of judicial calmness, for it is made of the stuff that
calls for enthusiasm. There need be no hesitation," he continued, "in
saying that Mr. MacDowell in this work fairly claims the position of
an American master. We may have no distinctive school of music, but
here is one young man who has placed himself on a level with the men
owned by the world. This D-minor concerto is a strong, wholesome,
beautiful work of art, vital with imagination, and made with masterly
skill." And Mr. James Huneker observed that "it easily ranks with any
modern work in this form. Dramatic in feeling, moulded largely, and
its themes musically eloquent, it sounds a model of its kind--the kind
which Johannes Brahms gave the world over thirty years ago in his
D-minor concerto." In March of the following year MacDowell gave two
piano recitals in the Madison Square Garden Concert Hall, New York,
playing, beside a number of his smaller pieces, his "Tragica" sonata,
which made, if anything, an even profounder impression than it had
made in Boston two years before. Probably the most signal of the
honours that came to him at this time was paid him when the Boston
Symphony Orchestra placed both his "Indian" suite and his first
concerto on the programme of its New York concert on January 23, 1896,
at the Metropolitan Opera House.

[6] A single movement of the "Sonata Tragica," the third, was played
by MacDowell in Boston on March 18, 1892, at the last of the three
recitals which he gave in that season at Chickering Hall.