At the age of eight, Edwin York Bowen performed as soloist in Dussek´s Piano Concerto, and won the Erard Scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music when he was only fourteen. He won many prizes at the RAM where he was awarded a fellowship in 1907 and was appointed Professor of piano two years later. Between 1904 and 1908, amongst other works, Bowen wrote (and performed) three of his four piano concertos, No.1 at the Proms under Henry Wood and No.4 conducted by Adrian Boult, and Saint-Sa´´ns described him as "... the most remarkable of the young British composers." He served as a bandsman in the Scots Guards during the First World War but contracted pneumonia in France in 1916 and had to be evacuated to the UK. Bowen resumed his musical career at the end of the War, teaching at the RAM, examining, performing and composing but his romantic style was out of step with the times and his music fell out of favour, not to be revived until decades after his death.