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Sem Dresden (1881-1957)

Sonate Nr. 2 voor cello en piano (1942)

1. Allegro molto - 00:00
2. Allegro agitato - 06:42
3. Poco lento - 12:36

Doris Hochscheid, cello
Frans van Ruth, piano

The CD and more information on Dutch Cello Sonatas are available at: www.cellosonate.nl


Sem Dresden was a Dutch composer and teacher. The scion of a diamond-broking family, his father tried to suppress his musical interests; nevertheless he managed to study with Roeske and Zweers in Amsterdam. On the strength of a promising student piano piece, he was sent in 1903 to study composition and conducting under Pfitzner at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin. Pfitzner unexpectedly steered his compositional interests towards French Impressionism; he also encouraged Dresden to remain in Germany as an opera conductor. After two years, however, he returned to the Netherlands. There, aided by his wife Jacoba, a noted alto, he began a career as choral conductor; he also continued to compose. From 1914 to 1926 he directed the nine-member Madrigal Society, which earned international repute for its painstaking performances of Renaissance and contemporary choral music; it was succeeded, from 1928 to 1940, by a larger chamber choir in Haarlem. In 1919 he had been appointed head of composition at the Amsterdam Conservatory and was its director from 1924 to 1937. With Pijper in 1922 he established the Dutch ISCM chapter. His erudite articles in De Amsterdammer and De Telegraaf (1918--1927) were a progressive influence in Dutch musical life.
Dresden was named director of the Royal Conservatory in The Hague in 1937 but served only three years before being dismissed, due to his Jewish ancestry, by German Occupation functionaries. He spent most of the war interned on an estate in Wassenaar; despite dangerous conditions he composed assiduously through these years. He resumed his post in The Hague after liberation, remaining until his retirement in 1949. Many noted Dutch musicians were his students, including Monnikendam, Godron, Smit, van Beinum, Felderhof, van Otterloo, Mul and Cor de Groot. Throughout his career Dresden served on numerous boards and committees, especially in choral education and music for youth. Such administrative functions together with composing occupied him after retirement. In his final hours, confirming the religious tendencies in his later works, he became a convert to Roman Catholicism.
The compositions written shortly after his return from Berlin show largely French influences, as in the four suites for wind and piano composed for the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Sextet. The impressionistic Sonata for Flute and Harp (1918), which emphasizes contrasting instrumental timbres, was acclaimed in both France and Holland. Dresden's later music is essentially tonal, but with modal twists and frequent added-note chords. An elastic use of metre may reflect his lifelong involvement with Renaissance polyphony. Long-arched, soaring melody is another hallmark, present in virtually every work from the Sonata for Flute and Harp onwards.
Through his choral experience he became fascinated with traditional Dutch songs, of which he made many popular arrangements. In addition, he used these tunes to generate themes in original compositions, either overtly (Quartet no.1) or as a form of musical punning or submerged quotation (Cello Sonata no.2, Piano Trio); Bizet and Wagner fragments are treated similarly in the Flute Concerto. This concern with motivic development carries over into the Dansflitsen, where a seven-movement dance suite grows out of one small motif. In the Chorus tragicus (1927), to a text by Vondel concerning the fall of Jerusalem, unusual choral techniques are used, with suggestive sound effects in the brass and percussion accompaniment. In this work, the Chorus symphonicus, St Antoine (written for an international congress of church music in Augsburg), Psalm 84 and St Joris, Dresden emerges as his country's leading twentieth-century composer of oratorios and festive choral music. The Chorus symphonicus, his most monumental composition, was written during World War II. The texts, from the penitential psalms, reflect the hardships and bitterness of everyday life in those years. By contrast, the operetta Toto, about a little dog concealed from licensing authorities, is a humorous representation of Dresden's own existence during the Occupation.
Dresden's last composition was the one-act opera François Villon, to his own text. His pupil Jan Mul prepared the orchestral score after the composer's death, and the work was first performed during the 1958 Holland Festival. It was praised as the most striking Dutch opera to date.