Otto Dresel (December 20, 1826 – July 26, 1890) was an American pianist, music teacher and composer of German birth.
He studied with Moritz Hauptmann in Leipzig, [1] and received guidance from Ferdinand Hiller and Felix Mendelssohn. Between 1846 and 1848 he wrote two chamber works, a piano trio and a piano quartet. He came to the United States in 1848. His participation in the revolutions of 1848 in Germany were a factor in this decision. [1] And after 1848, faster and safer steamers encouraged European musicians, especially those from Germany, to come to the United States to teach and perform. [2] In New York City, Dresel joined Theodore Eisfeld in presenting concerts.
In 1852 he moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where he lived until his death in Beverly, Massachusetts. He married Anna Loring (1830–1896), daughter of Ellis Gray Loring, an abolitionist and a founder of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, on October 29, 1863. They had two children, Louisa Loring Dresel (1864–195-) and Ellis Loring Dresel (1865–1925), an attorney and diplomat. [3]
He was well known as a pianist in Boston. He composed mainly chamber music and songs, as well as larger-scale settings of poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes for soloists with orchestra.
Dresel concentrated his energies on the selecting the highest quality music for his performances, and he eschewed displays of facile brilliance as were emphasized by musicians such as Europeans like Henri Herz and Sigismond Thalberg and the American Louis Moreau Gottschalk. [2] He fostered the appreciation of Bach and Handel in the United States, and was a vigorous promoter of the songs of his friend and colleague Robert Franz. [1]
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short life, Schubert left behind a vast oeuvre, including more than 600 secular vocal works, seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music, and a large body of piano and chamber music. His major works include the art song "Erlkönig", the Piano Trout Quintet in A major, the unfinished Symphony No. 8 in B minor, the "Great" Symphony No. 9 in C major, a String Quintet, the three last piano sonatas, the opera Fierrabras, the incidental music to the play Rosamunde, and the song cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise.
Artur Schnabel was an Austrian-American classical pianist, composer and pedagogue. Schnabel was known for his intellectual seriousness as a musician, avoiding pure technical bravura. Among the 20th century's most respected and important pianists, his playing displayed marked vitality, profundity and spirituality in the Austro-German classics, particularly the works of Beethoven and Schubert.
Amy Marcy Cheney Beach was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her "Gaelic" Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. She was one of the first American composers to succeed without the benefit of European training, and one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers of her era. As a pianist, she was acclaimed for concerts she gave featuring her own music in the United States and in Germany.
"Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser" was a personal anthem to Francis II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and later of the Austrian Empire, with lyrics by Lorenz Leopold Haschka (1749–1827) and music by Joseph Haydn. It is sometimes called the "Kaiserhymne". Haydn's tune has since been widely employed in other contexts: in works of classical music, in Christian hymns, in alma maters, and as the tune of the "Deutschlandlied", the national anthem of Germany.
Salomon Jadassohn was a German pianist, composer, and teacher at the Leipzig Conservatory.
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Iván Erőd was a Hungarian-Austrian composer and pianist. Educated in Budapest, he emigrated to Austria in 1956, where he studied at the Vienna Music Academy. He was successful as a pianist and composer of operas, chamber music and much more, with elements from serialism, Hungarian folk music and jazz. He first was a professor of music theory and composition at the University of Music in Graz (1967–1989), then a professor of composition at the Vienna Music Academy from 1989.
Ellis Loring Dresel was an American lawyer and diplomat. During World War I, from 1915 to 1917, Dresel was attaché to the U.S. embassy in Berlin. After the war, Dresel signed the peace treaty with Germany, and served as chargé d'affaires for a few months, before retiring from the Foreign Service altogether.
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Leonard Hokanson was an American pianist who achieved prominence in Europe as a soloist and chamber musician.
Herrman S. Saroni was an American composer, author, and publisher.
Michael Dussek is an English pianist specialising in chamber music and song accompaniment.