Reinecke, Carl

Preface

Carl Reinecke

Symphony No. 2 in C minor (“Håkon Jarl”), op. 134
(1874)

(b. Altona [Hamburg], 23 June 1824 – d. Leipzig, 10 March 1910)

I Allegro (p. 1)
II Andante (p. 67)
III Intermezzo. Allegretto moderato (p. 94)
IV Finale. Allegro (p. 125) – Più animato (p. 174) – Allegro molto (p. 176)

Preface
Carl Reinecke, one of the most prominent German composers in the generation of Bruckner and Brahms, is by no means uncontroversial among music historians. In an age of turmoil, from the revolution of Liszt’s “New German School” to the dismantlement of tonal harmony, he remained even in advanced age a guardian of tradition who staunchly upheld the ideals of a classicistic romanticism engendered by Mendelssohn and Schumann. By the age of six he was already taking lessons from his father Johann Rudolf Reinecke, and he gave his public début as early as 1835. He toured Europe as a solo pianist, earning a reputation as a “graceful player of Mozart.” From 1843 to 1846, thanks to a scholarship from the king of Denmark, Duke Christian VIII of Holstein (1786-1848) (at that time his native Altona, now a district of Hamburg, was the cultural capital of Schleswig-Holstein), he lived in Leipzig. There he became a protégé of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), playing the latter’s Serenade and Allegro giocoso, op. 43, in the Gewandhaus on 16 November 1843. He also made the acquaintance of Robert Schumann (1810-1856), whom he deeply revered. It thus comes as no surprise that Mendelssohn and Schumann should become the lodestars of his own music; and when conversation later turned to his dependence on these two models, he could nonchalantly reply, “I would raise no objection to being called an epigone.”

In 1847 Reinecke was appointed pianist to the Danish court, but his stay there was short-lived: the outbreak of the First Schleswig War in 1848 forced him to return to Leipzig. This time, however, his luck abandoned him, and he moved to Bremen in 1849 to become a conductor. At the recommendation of Franz Liszt (1811-1886), he was invited to Paris by Hector Berlioz (1803-1869). There he gave concerts as a pianist and was reunited with Ferdinand Hiller (1811-1885), whom he had met earlier in Leipzig. In 1851 Hiller, now the director of Cologne Conservatory, invited him to join his staff as a piano teacher. Reinecke resumed contact with Schumann, now working in nearby Düsseldorf, where he also made the acquaintance of the young Johannes Brahms (1833-1897). From 1854 to 1859 Reinecke was a conductor in Barmen, which had long possessed a flourishing musical culture (today it is a district of Wuppertal). He then became music director in Breslau (now Wrocław).

Hardly had Reinecke settled in Breslau than he received an offer to take charge of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. It would become the position of a lifetime, and he held it for twenty-five years from 1860 to 1895. He also functioned as a professor of piano and composition at Leipzig Conservatory at a time when a flood of highly gifted composers from all over the world moved there to put the finishing touches on their craft. Among his students were such leading figures as (in chronological order by date of birth) Max Bruch, Johan Severin Svendsen, Arthur Sullivan, Edvard Grieg, Hugo Riemann, Hans Huber, Charles Villiers Stanford, Iwan Knorr, Leoš Janáček, George Chadwick, Julius Röntgen, Christian Sinding, Ethel Smyth, Karl Muck, Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek, Isaac Albéniz, Frederick Delius, Robert Teichmüller, Felix Weingartner, Cornelis Dopper, Hermann Suter, Eyvind Alnæs, Gerhard von Keussler, Julián Carillo, Richard Wetz, Mikolajus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, and Sigfrid Karg-Elert.

Read full preface / Komplettes Vorwort lesen > HERE