Presents
Carl Reinecke
Introduction and Allegro appassionato, Op.256
For Clarinet and Piano
Nowadays, Carl Reinecke (1824-1910) has been all but forgotten, an unjust fate, to be sure, for a man who excelled in virtually every musical field with which he was involved. As a performer, Reinecke was, during the mid-19th century, reckoned for three decades as one of the finest concert pianists before the public. As a composer, he produced widely respected and often performed works in every genre running the gamut from opera, to orchestral to chamber music. As a teacher of composition and of piano, he was considered to have few if any equals. Among his many students were Grieg, Bruch, Janacek, Albeniz, Sinding, Svendsen, Reznicek, Delius, Arthur Sullivan, George Chadwick, Ethel Smyth, Felix Weingartner, Karl Muck and Hugo Riemann. In his time, Reinecke and his music were unquestionably regarded as first rate. Reinecke was born near Hamburg in the town of Altona, then in the possession of Denmark. Most of his musical training was obtained from his father, who was a widely respected teacher and author. Reinecke’s reputation was such that he obtained a Professorship at the prestigious Leipzig Conservatory and eventually rose to become its director.
Unlike many of his contemporaries or even some of those composers who were younger, such as Bruch, Reinecke was able to move beyond the music of Mendelssohn and Schumann, the musical idols of the mid 19th Century. His Introduction and Allegro appassionato was composed in 1901 and dedicated to the famous clarinet virtuoso Richard Mühlfield for whom Johannes Brahms had composed his clarinet sonatas. In this work, Reinecke employed features of Brahms’ style without slavishly without betraying his own style or slavishly imitating Brahms. The result was one of the most impressive works for clarinet and piano of the late Romantic era.
Here is a wonderful late romantic masterpiece which should be on the music stands of every clarinetist.
Parts: $19.95
