second suite, and in the following September she played at the Worcester Festival of that year the “Hexentanz” of op. 17.  On November 4, 1886, the “Ophelia” section of op. 22 was performed at the first of Mr. Van der Stucken’s “Symphonic Concerts” at Chickering Hall, New York.  Mr. H.E.  Krehbiel, reviewing the work in the Tribune, praised the orchestration as “brilliant” ("though the models studied are rather more obvious than we like"), the melodic invention as “beautiful” and as having a poetical mood and characteristic outline.  He considered that the music deserved repetition during the course of the season, and pronounced it “a finer work in every respect than the majority of the novelties which have come to us this season with French and English labels.”  Mr. Henry T. Finck, writing in the Evening Post, characterised the work as “an exquisitely conceived tone-poem, charmingly orchestrated and full of striking harmonic progressions.”  A year after the performance of the “Ophelia” in New York Mr. Van der Stucken produced its companion piece, “Hamlet.”  In April, 1888, at the first of a course of “pianoforte-concerto concerts” given by Mr. B.J.  Lang at Chickering Hall, Boston, MacDowell’s first concerto was played by Mr. B.L.  Whelpley.  “The effect upon all present,” wrote Mr. W.F.  Apthorp in the Transcript, “was simply electric.”  The concerto “was a surprise, if ever there was one.  We can hardly,” he declared, “recall a composition so full of astonishing and unprecedented effects [it will be recalled that this concerto was composed in 1882, when MacDowell was nineteen years old].  The work was evidently written at white heat; its brilliancy and vigour are astounding.  The impression it made upon us, in other respects, is as yet rather undigested...  But its fire and forcibleness are unmistakable.”  These opinions are of interest, for they testify to the prompt and ungrudging recognition which was accorded to MacDowell’s work, from the first, by responsible critics in his own country.

He might well have felt some pride in the sum of his achievements at this time.  He had not completed his twenty-seventh year; yet he had published a concerto and two orchestral works of important dimensions—­“Hamlet and Ophelia” and “Lancelot and Elaine”; most of the music that he had so far written had been publicly performed, and almost invariably praised with warmth; and he was becoming known in Europe and at home.  His material affairs, however, were far from being in a satisfactory or promising condition; for there was little more than a precarious income to be counted upon from his compositions; and he had given up teaching.  Musicians from America began coming to the little Wiesbaden retreat to visit the composer and his wife, and he was repeatedly urged to return to America and assume his share in the development of the musical art of his country.  It was finally decided that, all things considered, conditions would be more favorable in the United States; and in September, 1888, the MacDowells sold their Wiesbaden cottage, not without many pangs, and sailed for their own shores.