Background
He was born at Sheffield on the 13th of April 1816. He was the son of Robert Bennett, an organist.
(BENNETT: Piano Sextet, Op. 8 / Sonata Duo, Op. 32 by Ilon...)
BENNETT: Piano Sextet, Op. 8 / Sonata Duo, Op. 32 by Ilona Prunyi This product is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.
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composer conductor educator pianist
He was born at Sheffield on the 13th of April 1816. He was the son of Robert Bennett, an organist.
Having lost his father at an early age, he was brought up at Cambridge by his grandfather, from whom he received his first musical education.
He entered the choir of King's College chapel in 1824.
In 1826 he entered the Royal Academy of Music, and remained a pupil of that institution for the next ten years, studying pianoforte under W. H. Holmes and Cipriani Potter, and composition under Lucas and Dr Crotch.
Among Bennett's student compositions were a piano concerto (No. 1 in D minor, Op. 1), a symphony and an overture to The Tempest. The concerto received its public premiere at an orchestral concert in Cambridge on 28 November 1832, with Bennett as soloist. A further London performance was given in June 1833.
In 1834 he was elected organist of St Anne's chapel (now church), Wandsworth.
In this year he composed his Overture to Parisina, and his Concerto in С minor, modelled on Mozart. In the audience was Felix Mendelssohn, who was sufficiently impressed to invite Bennett to the Lower Rhenish Music Festival in Düsseldorf.
An unpublished concerto in F minor, and the overture to the Naiads, impressed the firm of Broadwood so favourably in 1836 that they offered the composer a year in Leipzig, where the Naiads overture was performed at a Gewandhaus concert on the 13th of February 1837.
Bennett visited Leipzig a second time in 1840-1841, when he composed his Caprice in E for pianoforte and orchestra and his overture The Wood Nymphs.
He settled in London, devoting himself chiefly to practical teaching.
The principal charm of Bennett's compositions (not to mention his absolute mastery of the musical form) consists in the tenderness of their conception, rising occasionally to sweetest lyrical intensity.
As his best works in various branches of art, we may mention, for pianoforte solo, and with accompaniment of the orchestra, his three sketches, The Lake, The Millstream and The Fountain, and his 3rd pianoforte concerto; for the orchestra, his Symphony in G minor, and his overture The Naiads', and for voices, his cantata The May Queen, written for the Leeds Festival in 1858.
For the jubilee of the Philharmonic Society he wrote the overture Paradise and the Peri in 1862.
He also wrote a sacred cantata, The Woman of Samaria, first performed at the Birmingham Musical Festival in 1867.
Shortly before his death he produced a sonata called the Maid of Orleans, an elaborate piece of programme-music based on Schiller's tragedy.
(BENNETT: Piano Sextet, Op. 8 / Sonata Duo, Op. 32 by Ilon...)
In 1844 Bennett married Mary Anne Wood (1824–1862), the daughter of a naval commander.