He has always stood in Beethoven's shadow, with whom he played in the Bonn Hofkapelle. Yet Anton Reicha is in no way inferior to the Viennese titan in creativity, and Beethoven himself held his colleague of the same age in high esteem. Reason enough to put together a special package for their 250th anniversary: three carefully produced CDs with Reicha's quintets for wind instrument and string quartet each, plus another with orchestral works, make up a pack of four of far more than just historical value. This is not least due to the outstanding artists: The Consortium Classicum around Spiritus Rector Dieter Klöcker is always a bank for high-quality chamber music discoveries, and Peter Gülke with his Symphony Orchestra Wuppertal shows once again his profound understanding of music. The fact that with Ida Biehler and Jean-Claude Gerard for Reicha's Sinfonia Concertante he is accompanied by two world-class soloists makes this re-release an exciting experience once again. Reicha's original spirit is evident not least in his virtuoso handling of form and convention. As a writer of music theoretical and pedagogical values, he was well aware of the expectations of the audience. All the more spectacular is the Overture in D Major: it is in 5/8 time from beginning to end and makes many a connoisseur smile... No wonder that later great names such as Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz and Charles Gounod queued up for lessons with him!

Classical Music

The Michael Thompson Wind Quintet, today known as The Michael Thompson Wind Ensemble, came into existence in 1992 when Barry Tuckwell announced that he was leaving the Wind Quintet that bore his name. The remaining instrumentalists unanimously turned to the finest horn soloist they knew to take his place, and Michael Thompson had no hesitation in accepting the invitation to head the illustrious group. The original Quintet, which brought together five of London's leading wind-players, was formed in 1969 and in the course of the next two decades performed in Russia, Australia, the Far East, Europe and the United States. The Ensemble today is of impeccable pedigree, each player a soloist in his own right. Michael Thompson himself is in great demand throughout the world as a teacher and, in addition to his post as horn professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London, has given master classes in the United States, Japan and Australia. As soloist/director he has recorded Mozart's complete works for horn and orchestra with the Bournemouth Sinfonietta.

Following their critically acclaimed debut album, the Belfiato Quintet have gone back a century in time, to the "father of the wind quintet" Anton�n Rejcha's life was adventurous and turbulent indeed. When he was 10, he ran away from his Prague home, and would live in turn in Bonn, Hamburg and Vienna, before finally settling in Paris. He presented his first symphony at the tender age of 17. Rejcha became a friend of Beethoven's, who played the viola in the same orchestra, he made the acquaintance with Haydn, and his teachers included Salieri. A keen experimenter, he liked to write in quintuple time, was fascinated by Gypsy music with micro-intervals, playing with numbers and chords, polyrhythm, polytonality and counterpoint. Moreover, he was an accomplished theorist and a renowned teacher, also working as a professor at the Conservatoire de Paris. His students included Liszt, Berlioz, Franck and other distinguished composers. Rejcha was the first to write truly masterful wind quintets, making full use of the instruments' timbres and technical potential. Notwithstanding it's being challenging to perform, his music comes across as bright, airy and gracious. The Belfiato Quintet selected three - the most beautiful and most engrossing - of Rejcha's 24 wind quintets, which they have recorded at the acoustically exceptionable Rudolfinum hall in Prague. It would seem that the virtuoso and passionate musicians have found in Rejcha a kindred spirit.

The piano music of the Czech-born composer Antoine Reicha (1770–1836) – friend of Haydn and Beethoven, teacher of Berlioz, Liszt and Franck – has only recently begun to be discovered. He was an important influence on composers of the next generation but until the last few years his piano works remained almost completely unknown. Encompassing Baroque practices as well as looking forward to the twentieth century, they are full of harmonic and other surprises that show this liveliest of musical minds at work. In this fourth volume of his survey of Reicha’s piano music Henrik Löwenmark sandwiches a number of quixotic miniatures between two grand but idiosyncratic sonatas.

The Italian Classical Consort brings Anton Reicha's works to life once again on this new release from Urania Records. Reicha was a Czech-born composer, later becoming a naturalized Frenchman. Reicha's output during his years in Vienna was prolific and included large cycles of works, some showcased on this new release.

REICHA: Wind Quintets, Op. 88, No. 4 and Op. 99, No. 6

REICHA: Wind Quintets, Op. 88, No. 2 and Op. 100, No. 5

Classical Music

The young Thalia Ensemble erupted into the public spotlight with their being chosen as winners at the prestigious biennial York Early Music International Young Artists Competition. Their debut release spotlights the compositions of Antoine Reicha. Regarded as a pre-eminent composer for winds, Reicha , a flautist had an uncanny gift of melding the various wind instruments into a rich sonic tapestry in his compositions and the Thalia Ensemble’s inspired and dynamic playing proves to be a perfect match with the lively Wind Quintets.

REVIEWS:

The name Antoine Reicha is one which has fairly comprehensively slipped between the floorboards of musical history, except for within one select circle of musicians, wind players. With them Reicha's wind music, and in particular his wind quintets, has remained current and provides a useful and engaging program filler. The present CD brings us two wind quintets and an Adagio for wind quartet and obbligato cor anglais all played on period instruments of the early 19th century. This final detail may seem relatively unimportant in these days of the ubiquity of period performances, but in this case it was a major factor in my enjoyment of the CD. While tuneful and accessible, Reicha's music is occasionally accused of blandness, but when the Thalia Ensemble moved into the more chromatic passages of these works the music became imbued with considerable individuality. As a flute player himself, Reicha writes beautifully for the flute, but what is perhaps most striking is his mastery of the wind quintet as an entity - perhaps not since Mozart and not until Nielsen did anyone write such accomplished chamber music for winds. 5 stars.

– Early Music Review

These are infectious works, intended not to provoke but simply to delight, and in these elegantly shaped performances they do just that.

– Gramophone

The fruitful partnership between the Alpha label, the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel and the Palazzetto Bru Zane continues with this set of chamber music by Anton Reicha, performed by the musicians of the Chapel, young talents of an exceptionally high standard, ready and willing to take up the challenge of this music. A key figure of the early nineteenth century, this Czech composer who became a naturalised French citizen did not leave his contemporaries indifferent. Both his music and his theoretical writings set zealous partisans against fierce detractors. This three-part album, assembling pieces from different genres and periods, gives an insight into the richness of the composer’s extremely prolific output of chamber music, whose originality can still fascinate us nearly two centuries after his death: it illustrates the diversity of the instrumental genres he tackled (sonatas, fugues, études and variations for piano; piano trio, string quartet, string quintet) and a compositional art characterised at once by perfect mastery – as one would expect from someone trained by Haydn in Vienna between 1802 and 1808 – and by the greatest originality.

The piano music of the Czech-born composer Antoine Reicha (1770–1836) – friend of Haydn and Beethoven, teacher of Berlioz, Liszt, Franck and many others – is one of the best-kept secrets in music. He was an important influence on composers of the next generation but apart from an innovative set of fugues his piano works have remained almost unknown since his own day. Encompassing Baroque practices as well as looking forward to the twentieth century, they are full of harmonic and other surprises that show this liveliest of musical minds at work. Reicha’s twenty Études ou Exercices, recorded here for the first time, manage to combine his maverick inventiveness with a considerable degree of charm.

The piano works of the Czech-born composer Antoine Recha - friend of Haydn and Beethoven, teacher of Berlioz, Liszt and Franck - are one of hte best-kept secrets in music. He was an important influence on composers of the next generation but, apart from an innovative set of fugues, his piano works have remained almost unknown since his own day. Encompassing Baroque practices as well as looking forward to the twentieth century, they are full o fharmonic and other surprises that show this liveliest of minds at work. The massive variation-set on a simple French gavotte recorded here for the first time reveals a composer who tempers his learning with a vivid sense of humor. Henrik Lowenmark is the world authority on the piano music of Reicha. He was born in Gothenburg and educated at the university there but has long since lived in Stockholm. Since his graduation he has been active as freelance musician in a multitude of contexts: solo, chamber, accompaniment and song-coaching. In 2006, he finished his master's thesis, The Piano Music of Anton Reicha, at the University of Gothenburg.

Czech-born composer Antoine Reicha (1770-1836) was an extremely influential influence on composers of the late 19th century. His own compositions, however, fell into obscurity in the shadows of his contemporaries Haydn and Beethoven. This release, compiling Reicha’s complete piano works, displays his usage of both Baroque compositional practices and of compositional practices that would look forward into the twentieth century. An international authority on the piano works of Reicha, Henrik Lowenmark is a Stockholm-based musician who is active as a solo artist, accompanist, and chamber musician.

The Czech-born composer Anton Reicha (1770–1836) was an exact contemporary of Beethoven, and his close friend from their mid-teens. The music of each man demonstrates an awareness of what the other was doing: they showed each other their compositions-in-progress. But although Reicha was closely associated with one of the best-known names in western culture, his own music has been grievously neglected: only his woodwind quintets have achieved any currency. Of his vast cycle of almost forty string quartets just one had been recorded before – an omission this ambitious project intends to put right, thereby revealing one of the most inventive and engaging spirits in classical music. - Toccata Classics

Classical Music

Ludwig van Beethoven took his first musical steps in the chapel of the prince-bishop's court in Bonn. With the "Edition Hofkapelle", the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn is searching for traces. The first series of Harmoniemusik reveals something astonishing: Beethoven was never again as operatic as he was in Bonn, inspired by a musical environment that appreciated musical entertainment at the highest level. "Richard the Lionheart" was on everyone's lips and ears in Beethoven's Bonn time; the master himself composed a cycle of piano variations on Grétry's catchy melodies. It is not unlikely that he also knew Franz Ehrenfried's harmony music on the popular opera, which the wind players of the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn present here with a delight in the theatrical - from Blondel's soulful romance "Une fièvre brûlante" to the spirited drinking song about the Sultan Saladin. The Hofkapelle approaches Beethoven's Octet with equal verve, which, despite the misleading opus number 103, can be located in his Bonn period. Beethoven is seldom heard in such a lively and animated manner - associations from Mozart's "Abduction" to Rossini's "Barber" come to mind. The "Rondino" is given a particularly distinctive color by the impressively virtuoso use of natural horns, which Beethoven knows how to enhance even further by playing with mutes. As orchestra director, Joseph Reicha must have had a special influence on the young Beethoven; this may be evident from both sextets. With Lorenzo Coppola as coach, the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn has brought in a real specialist for wind music of the classical period, and the fact that with the rococo festival hall of the Redoute, an almost originally preserved performance venue can be experienced on this album and the three-dimensional sound rounds off this unusual production beautifully.

The Serbian-American Paris-based pianist Ivan Ilic has signed a new multi-album recording contract with Chandos Records, following internationally acclaimed recordings of works by Godowsky and Feldman. His first project on the label is a series devoted to the solo piano works of the Czech composer Antoine Reicha, a contemporary and lifelong friend of Beethoven. Although best known for his contributions to the repertoire for wind quintet, Reicha wrote vast quantities of solo piano music, most of which has never been recorded. The manuscripts, preserved in the Bibliotheque nationale de France, were published only recently. Offering premiere recordings of the Grande Sonate in C major, the Sonata in F major, and three excerpts from Practische Beispiele, this first volume confirms Reicha as an authoritative, singular voice, whose piano works complement and enrich our understnanding of Haydn and Beethoven. Volume 1 is a coproduction of Chandos, RTS (Swiss Radio), and the Palazzetto Bru Zane- Centre de Musique Romantique Francaise in Venice.

For this his third volume of works by Antoine Reicha, the pianist Ivan Ilic turns to one of the composer’s most extraordinary works, L’Art de varier, Op. 57. ‘The Art of Variation’ consists of fifty-seven variations on a theme (that the number of variations match the opus number is not a coincidence) and was composed in 1802 – 03, at the beginning of the six-year period which Reicha spent in Vienna, where he studied with Haydn and re-kindled his previous friendship with Beethoven. The set is remarkable for its scale and invention. Ivan Ilic describes the work as the missing link between Bach’s ‘Goldberg’ Variations and Beethoven’s ‘Diabelli’ Variations, which was certainly influenced by Reicha’s work. The recording was made at Potton Hall in Suffolk, on a Steinway Model D grand piano.

REVIEW:

For almost 90 minutes [Reicha] subjects a simple, songful theme to the most kaleidoscopic imaginable treatment, and – thanks in part to the freshness and clarity of Ilić’s playing – the wonder is that I don’t get bored. The first variation is a demure little embroidery on the theme, and the second thunders in Beethovenian style. Then, after establishing these polarities, he’s off on a voyage full of drama and incident. Reicha’s invention never flags for a moment.

– BBC Music Magazine (5 out of stars)

The eagerly awaited volume 2 in the fascinating exploration of Antoine Reicha’s keyboard music by the trailblazing pianist Ivan Ilic is now out! Ilic here digs into a crucial aspect of Antoine Reicha’s music: counterpoint and the manner in which Bach’s music served as a point of departure for Reicha’s eclectic, fertile mind and wide variety of musical styles. If most of these etudes are made up of a Prelude paired with a Fugue, their variety offers the album great diversity, and unveils the compositional genius of Antoine Reicha: here are unexpected moods and textures, sophisticated canons, cheeky invertible counterpoint, chaconnes and minuet-like character pieces, even a piece the only unifying characteristic of which seems to be its tumbling scales in dotted rhythm. Ilic’s unique interpretations are supported by enlightening booklet notes, written by the pianist himself, shedding light on revelatory moments in the composer’s life. While the musical world will soon become saturated with celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Beethoven, his friend and exact contemporary Antoine Reicha will enjoy a renaissance with this unmissable series.