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Carl Reinecke:
Three Premiere Recordings
Fenwick Smith, flute
Hugh Hinton, piano
Members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Octet for winds in B-flat, Op. 216 (c1892)
Sextet for winds in B-flat, Op. 271 (c1905)
Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe (From the Cradle to the Grave), Op. 202 (1888), arranged for flute and piano by Ernesto Köhler
Etcetera Records KTC 1155.
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![[Picture of disc cover]](Images/reinecke.jpg)
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Reinecke's sonata and concerto are among the most popular in the flute repertoire, so I thought it was something of a coup to be able to present three other works of his in premiere recordings. All are now in print and readily available, although this was not the case as I embarked on this project. In fact I got my hands on the elusive Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe, in the days before the Internet, only after a year-long search involving librarians on two continents. I am grateful to Rien de Reede for providing a pre-publication copy of his edition of these attractive pieces, and to Michael Stoune for making available the parts for the Sextet.
Program Notes
For composers of chamber music in the romantic era, string instruments, with or without piano, constituted the sonic ideal. Pure wind ensembles were avoided so assiduously during this period that between Beethoven's Sextet, Op. 71, of 1796 and Hindemith's Kleine Kammermusik of 1922, not a single such work was written by an Austrian or German composer of the first rank. In fact one must reach for such unfamiliar names as Franz Danzi, August Klughart and Gustav Schreck to identify the few such works in existence. Against this barren backdrop the Sextet and Octet of Reinecke loom large indeed, for they are substantial, handsomely crafted works.
Reinecke, the precocious child of a provincial music teacher, was an accomplished violinist and violist; moreover he was among Germany's most prominent concert pianists. He started composing at the age of seven, and continued throughout his long and enormously productive life, accumulating a catalogue of 288 opus numbers in all genres. Truly the complete musician, Reinecke also enjoyed a successful career as conductor. In 1860 he was appointed music director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig and professor of piano and composition at the Conservatory.
Since the 1840s Mendelssohn and Schumann had been the leading lights of Leipzig's abundant musical life. Reinecke was an admirer and disciple of both, and his compositional style and artistic aims were much influenced by the older masters. From about 1890, however, Brahms's star was on the rise, and Reinecke's accomplishments, though highly regarded, were increasingly overshadowed by those of the greater composer. Around this time, wind instruments began to figure more prominently in Reinecke's output--a development that may largely be explained by his desire to avoid competing with Brahms on his own turf. At least one commentator, explaining why Brahms so completely overshadowed Reinecke, suggested that scoring for richness of tone was not Reinecke's forte. But in the Sextet and especially in the Octet, Reinecke handily avoids this defect--his decades of experience as an orchestral conductor gave him a thorough knowledge of the wind instruments, and the music invariably sounds well. In the Adagio of the Octet, for example, his exemplary scoring yields a sonority at once rich, noble, and beautifully balanced. Though the skill with which he develops his material is sometimes more memorable than the tunes themselves, his harmonic vocabulary is assured, his mastery of form complete. Indeed the only mystery attending these genial pieces is that they should have been so long and so widely overlooked, and that they should have had to wait a century for their first recording.
Reinecke's cycle of sixteen piano pieces Op. 202, Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe (From the Cradle to the Grave), was published in 1888. It appears to have been a great success: a biography of Reinecke was issued four years later by his principal publisher, J.H. Zimmerman, including several advertisements for his recent works. A full page is devoted to Op. 202, with glowing critical notices and descriptions of numerous (unattributed) arrangements, including the present one for flute and piano.
It was typical practice for composers as successful as Reinecke to entrust the making of such arrangements to others. Schumann, pressed by his publisher for a piano four-hand arrangement of his Third Symphony, had in fact recommended the young Reinecke. The present arrangement was made by the flutist-composer Ernesto Köhler. Eight of the sixteen piano pieces were transcribed, retaining their original order and self-explanatory titles. In these charmingly Schumannesque miniatures Reinecke's indebtedness to the older composer in underscored by his quotation of the Grossvatertanz--a seventeenth-century dance quoted several times in Schumann's own works, and traditionally the last dance at the ball. Reinecke introduces this tune in Abendsonne (Sunset) and builds it up to a climax of considerable vitality--as we might expect from a composer who retained his creative energy into advanced old age.
Copyright 1993, Fenwick Smith
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