Composer: Antoine Reicha
Performer: Henrik Löwenmark
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Toccata
Catalogue: TOCC0008
Release: 2016
Size: 519 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
Piano Sonata in G Major, Op. 46 No. 1
01. I. Allegro
02. II. Adagio molto
03. III. Finale: poco Presto
Piano Sonata in B-Flat Major, Op. 46 No. 2
04. I. Allegro vivace
05. II. Andante un poco Adagio
06. III. Poco Presto
Piano Sonata in E Major, Op. 46 No. 3
07. I. Allegro
08. II. Andante un poco Adagio
09. III. Finale: Allegro scherzando
2 Fantasies, Op. 59
10. No. 1 in C Major: Adagio molto
11. No. 2 in F Major: Adagio
For two hundred years the piano music of the Czech-born composer Antoine Reicha (1770–1836) – friend of Haydn and Beethoven, teacher of Berlioz, Liszt and Franck – has been buried treasure. Reicha was an important influence on composers of the next generation (indeed, Berlioz was happy to lift a few ideas from him), but apart from an innovative set of fugues his piano works have remained unknown since his own day. The works here reach beyond their own time: they both encompass Baroque practices and look forward to the twentieth century. They are also full of harmonic and other surprises that show this liveliest of minds at work.
Henrik Löwenmark is the international 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 music, accompaniment and song-coaching, orchestral piano, choir, opera and so on. His interest in Reicha started in the 1980s and in 1999 he began to collect all the piano music that had not been published in modern editions – almost all the extant music. In 2006 he finished his master’s thesis, The Piano Music of Anton Reicha, at the University of Gothenburg.