His virtuoso technique was compared to that of Busoni. He was praised for his playing of Beethoven's sonatas and J. S. Bach's preludes and fugues, some of which d'Albert transcribed for piano. "As an exponent of Beethoven, Eugen d'Albert has few, if any, equals." Gradually, d'Albert's work as a composer occupied his time more and more, and he reduced his concert playing. He was the recipient of a number of dedications, most notably of Richard Strauss's Burleske in D minor, which he premiered in 1890. In 1907 he became the director of the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, where, according to The Times, he exerted a wide influence on musical education in Germany. He also held the post of Kapellmeister to the Court of Weimar. D'Albert was a prolific composer. His output includes a large volume of successful piano and chamber music and lieder. He also composed twenty-one operas, in a wide variety of styles, which premiered mostly in Germany. His first, Der Rubin (1893) was an oriental fantasy; Die Abreise (1898), which established him as an opera composer in Germany, was a one-act domestic comedy; Kain (1900) was a setting of the biblical story; and one of his last operas, Der Golem, was on a traditional Jewish theme. His most successful opera was his seventh, Tiefland, which premiered in Prague in 1903. When Thomas Beecham introduced the opera to London, The Times observed, "the scoring owes more than a little to the discipline of Sullivan; there is also a curiously English fragrance". Tiefland played in opera houses throughout the world and has retained a place in the standard German and Austrian repertoire, with a production at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, in November 2007. According to biographer Hugh Macdonald, it "provides a link between Italian verismo and German expressionist opera, although the orchestral textures recall a more Wagnerian language." Another stage success was a comic opera called Flauto solo in 1905. D'Albert's most successful orchestral works included his cello concerto (1899), a symphony, two string quartets and two piano concertos. "Though not a composer of profound originality ... he had an unfailing sense of dramatic appropriateness and all the resources of a symphonic technique to give it expression and was thus able to achieve success in so many styles". Personal life and death D'Albert's friends included Richard Strauss, Hans Pfitzner, Engelbert Humperdinck, Ignatz Waghalter and Gerhart Hauptmann, the dramatist. He