Dutch Cello Sonatas Vol. 3 Matthijs Vermeulen Sonatas No. 1 + 2 Jan Ingenhoven Sonatas No. 1 + 2 Doris Hochscheid, violoncello Frans van Ruth, piano 1 Hybrid-SACD Order No.: Audiomax 903 1655-6 UPC-Code: ____________________________________________________________________________________ The Audiomax documentation of Dutch cello sonatas has become a genuine discovery collection. Vol. 3 presents four works by Jan Ingenhoven (1876-1951) and Matthijs Vermeulen (1888-1967), two composers who during the early decades of the twentieth century, each in his own independent way, reacted against the traditional music culture in their native country and sought new expressive forms for Dutch music in France. Discovery Collection Jan Ingenhoven began his highly promising career as a conductor of the Munich Orchestral Society and the Philharmonic Orchestra. He wrote his first composition as an autodidact but then used some of his time in Munich for instruction in composition from Felix Mottl. This venture was so successful that Ingenhoven thenceforth thought only of composing. He found the necessary peace for this endeavor and sufficient distance from his native country in Saint-Cloud near Paris, where he wrote his two cello sonatas in 1919 and 1922. Ingenhoven confronted the “Dutch inertia” of his times with “resounding tonality” and a vigorous forward musical drive. This is hardly surprising – since he of course became acquainted with Claude Debussy’s music, which did not remain without its influence on his writing style. It was Claude Debussy’s death in 1918 that inspired the thirty-year-old Matthijs Vermeulen to compose his first cello sonata. Vermeulen had completed his training in Amsterdam and had turned more to the grand symphonic repertoire prior to developing greater interest in chamber music. This must have been a happy time for him, with a passionate love and the much-desired end of World War I motivating him to complete the work within a few months. His hope of finding a more positive musical climate in France, however, remained unfulfilled. Encouraged by many successful performances of his works and hymns of praise from authoritative sources (including Nadia Boulanger), Vermeulen composed his second cello sonata, completing it in August 1938. He was nevertheless enraged when the sonata was premiered in June 1943: the interpreters had underestimated the work’s degree of difficulty. Today we know that in the late 1930s Vermeulen had written one of the most beautiful but also most difficult cello sonatas since Debussy. Vol. 1: Willem Pijper: Sonata No. 1 (1919) and No. 2 (1924), Luctor Ponse: Sonata No. 1 (1943) Rudolf Escher: Sonata Concertante (1943, rev. 1955) Audiomax 903 1534-6 (Hybrid-SACD) Vol. 2: Julius Röntgen: Cello Sonatas op. 41 and 56, Cinq Morceaux Daniel van Goens: Scherzo op. 12, 2; Invocation op. 36; Menuet op. 39, 2 Audiomax 903 1574-6 (Hybrid-SACD) Distributed by: CODAEX, Larenstraat 58, B-3560 Lummen TEL: ++32-13-35 20 60• FAX: ++32-13-55 67 50 .