(This volume contains two chamber works by the German-Amer...)
This volume contains two chamber works by the German-American composer Otto Dresel (1826-90): his Piano Trio in A Minor and Piano Quartet in F Major. Both works were composed during his studies with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. In contrast to Dresel's lieder, which follow in the steps of Schumann and Robert Franz, these compositions, especially the heroic trio, are worthy successors to Mendelssohn's own chamber music. The quartet, a more intimate essay than the trio, features a charming Intermezzo that became one of Dresel's most popular compositions during his lifetime. Franz Liszt reviewed both pieces and called them "remarkably distinguished works." They are indeed eminently performable, engaging, and tuneful works that enlarge not only the repertory of chamber music from this period, but also the record of the high standard of innovative music making in the United States prior to the Civil War. Both works are published here for the first time.
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Otto Dresel was born [n 1825 in Geisenheim-on-the-Rhine, Germany. He was the son of Johann Dietrich Dresel and Luise Ephardt. He grew up in a progressive, intellectual home, his father being a sympathizer with the German liberal movement of 1848. After he had studied piano and composition with Hiller in Cologne and Mendelssohn in Leipzig, Dresel came to the United States in 1848.
Dresel studied piano and composition with Hiller in Cologne and Mendelssohn in Leipzig.
Dresel settled in New York, as a concert- pianist and teacher in that middle period when “French, Italian, and English opera companies boarded the swifter and safer steamers for experiments in the American marketplace, and singers and instrumentalists from Germany in particular surged in to exploit the concert and teaching field”.
Dresel, when he returned to America in 1852 after a visit to Germany, made Boston his permanent home, perhaps because in New York, as in New Orleans, the opera with its social corollaries was more esteemed than concert music, and he felt his talent would more quickly win recognition in a more conservative city. Nor was he mistaken in his choice; his merit was soon recognized, and for more than fifteen years he held his place as Boston’s foremost resident pianist, whose interpretation of the masterpieces of the classic piano repertoire gave evidence of his taste and technique. His influence was all the more valuable because, as a concert pianist, he avoided the facile brilliancies of such Europeans as Henri Herz, who had toured the United States and Mexico immediately before Dresel established himself in Boston; and Sigismund Thalberg, who played in Boston during his tour of the country in 1856. These virtuosos, like their American contemporary, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, inculcated a worship of mere bravura which Dresel consistently opposed by a conscientious cult of what was qualitatively highest in the literature of his instrument. His exceptional culture, incidentally, prevented his confining his influence to the piano recital.
He had collaborated with Robert Franz in supplying accompaniments for the vocal scores of Bach and Handel, and he took special pains to make the Franz songs known. His original compositions include piano pieces, songs, chamber music, an “Army Hymn” for solo, chorus, and orchestra, and a setting of Longfellow’s “In Memoriam, ” soprano and orchestra, to commemorate the fiftieth birthday of Louis Agassiz.
(This volume contains two chamber works by the German-Amer...)
