From the Archives: William Dorrell
(5 September 1810 – 13 December 1896)
Oil painting by Katherine D.M. Bywater; ca 1880.
Dorrell joined RSM on 6 May 1838; his application form reads “he has studied and practised Music as a profession seven years. Performs on the Pianoforte, and Tenor [viola]; is engaged as a Professor at the Royal Academy of Music, and has much private teaching; is a single man …”. His recommenders were the pianist and composer Cipriani Potter (1792-1871) who had been the first piano teacher at the Royal Academy of Music in 1822 and was to become principal in 1832; the clarinettist Thomas Willman (1784-1840) who gave the first performance in England of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto; and the harpist, clarinettist and composer John Parry (1776-1851). Parry was once Treasurer of RSM, and wrote a History of RSM, as well as An Account of the Royal Musical Festival held in Westminster Abbey (1834).
Following lessons from his elder sister, Jane Dorrell (d.1883), he studied at the RAM with William Crotch (1775-1847) and Potter, with a further period in Paris studying with Frédéric Kalkbrenner (1785-1849) and Stephen Heller (1813-1888). Although mainly known as a teacher he gave a concert at the Hanover Square Rooms on 2 June 1842 at which Mendelssohn heard him perform William Sterndale Bennett’s piano concerto in E-flat.
Photograph from the album presented by Frederick Galliard Lyon in 1874.