Reicha_SQs_V1 Anton REICHA (1770-1836) Complete String Quartets -vol.1 String Quartet in C, op.48 no.1 (c.1802) [32:42] String Quartet in G, op.48 no.2 (c.1802) [31:24] Kreutzer Quartet rec. St John the Baptist, Aldbury, Hertfordshire, England, 6 and 25 February 2013. TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0022 [64:15] Bohemian composer Anton Reicha was born Antonín Rejcha, but soon moved to Germany where he adopted the German version of his name used on this CD. Later, following his naturalisation in France, he assumed the French equivalent Antoine, under which most of his music was published. Reicha was not much of a nationalist, to put it mildly - he soon forsook, even forgot, his native Czech language as he grew fluent in French and German. In Germany Reicha became a dear friend to one of his exact contemporaries, a fellow called Beethoven, to the extent that they studied each other's work-in-progress. Such is the fickle nature of history, however, that Reicha's name today is barely recognised, despite the fact that he also taught the likes of Berlioz, Liszt, Gounod, Franck and Onslow. At the very best he may be known to some as the composer of a substantial series of comparatively conservative woodwind quintets. A good example of this cultural neglect can be found - or not, as it were - in the string quartets, of which, according to Toccata, only one has ever been recorded. New Grove's only mention of them is in passing, that "cadentially elided, thematically connected movements shape the String Quartet op.52". Yet given that Reicha was a composer influenced by - and exerting an influence over - Beethoven, creator of arguably the greatest string quartet cycle in history, the immense value of Toccata's project to record all of Reicha's is obvious. Co-annotator Ron Drummond explores Reicha's relationship with Beethoven in his booklet essay, 'Introducing Anton Reicha's Vienna String Quartets', which is long and fascinating, even if it does go too far in claiming Reicha's opp.48 and 49 quartets to be "a very explicit response to Beethoven's op.18". Elsewhere he has written: "I am convinced that the absence of Reicha's quartets from the repertoire seriously impoverishes our understanding of the evolution of the string quartet - that's how significant Reicha's quartets are." This time he may well be right. Drummond claims "at least 37" quartets for Reicha, excluding fragments and pedagogy, substantially more than those listed in New Grove. He makes up the figures with tantalising mention of fourteen new works unearthed at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris in 2000. In any case, Drummond helpfully lists all the known quartets, bringing the reader right up to date with scholarship. The three quartets of op.48 - no.3 should follow on volume 2 - were Reicha's earliest published works in this genre, part of a batch appearing in Leipzig in or just after 1804. Chronologically they follow Beethoven's op.18 quartet sextet, but in some respects they are more redolent of late Haydn - only with lots of 'wrong' notes and parts, as if old Haydn were still a young prankster. Reicha's highly original experimentation is certainly bold enough to have raised audience eyebrows constantly, whilst remaining 'tasteful' enough not to have sparked off any rioting. As for the recording project, who better to entrust with this massive cycle than the Kreutzer Quartet, one of the UK's finest? In fact, despite their familiarity with the core Classical-Romantic repertoire, the Kreutzers' true expertise arguably lies in more contemporary, as often as not modernist, repertoire. There are several ensembles that might have been that little bit more persuasive - these proto-Romantic works have quite different stylistic and expressive demands to the quartets of, say, Gloria Coates (review) or Michael Finnissy (Métier MSV 92011). In the C major Quartet there are indeed one or two timing and intonation issues, but in fairness the Kreutzers settle down well for the G major. Toccata's audio quality is good as usual, albeit rather on the bright side. In his own booklet essay, 'Reicha's Quartets From Where I Sit', Peter Sheppard Skærved is typically informative, although he can sound somewhat highbrow and, like Drummond, does get rather bogged down at times in minutiae. His likening of somewhat highbrow and, like Drummond, does get rather bogged down at times in minutiae. His likening of Reicha's quartets to different sets of Beethoven's, Mozart's and Haydn's results in a blizzard of opus numbers and key names, for example. Overall this is a decent start - with some room for improvement - to a cycle of quartets that may well be one of the most historically important recorded for many years. Byzantion Contact at artmusicreviews.co.uk Comment from a reader I have enjoyed both this and the next volume, and agree with your reviewer on the whole. But I think there is room for a lot of improvement in the interpretation of these quartets as string players get the hang of what Rejcha before his professorship is about. The best Rejcha chamber performances for me on disc so far are those by the Guarneri Trio Prague of the op 101/1-3 Piano trios (SU4057-2). These have a wonderful energy and rhythmic vitality (somewhat like early Beethoven, e.g. the piano and string trios) yet absolutely a different, inspired and individual composer. They make you wonder how much time Rejcha and Beethoven must have spent challenging, arguing, agreeing, disagreeing and intriguing each other. They did send their music to their Leipzig publisher in the same package. Jonathan Reeve REICHA String Quartets: in C, op. 48/1; in G, op. 48/2 • Kreutzer Qrt • TOCCATA 0022 (64:16) Reicha: Complete String Quartets, Vol. 1 Audio CD Toccata Anton Reicha (1770–1836) is not a composer one normally associates with string quartets. In fact, not one of the over 50 reviews in the Fanfare Archive covering recordings of Reicha’s music headlines a string quartet, and, amazingly, neither Amazon nor ArkivMusic lists a single entry for a Reicha string quartet. Probably that’s because music for winds seems to have been the composer’s forte, and of the trios, quartets, and quintets galore that fill his catalog, most would appear to include one or more wind instruments. But appearances can be deceiving. Looking over the list of Reicha's works more closely, one actually finds quite a few entries for strings alone—i.e., withoutparts for winds; and of those opus numbers for strings only, at least 20 of them are formally and in title string quartets. The Toccata CD at hand is labeled Volume 1, so I assume that the Kreutzer Quartet is engaged in a project to record Reicha’s complete string quartetoeuvre, and perhaps in chronological order; for the two on this disc are the first in a set of three that bear the lowest opus number (48) and date (1804) in the composer’s list of string quartets. Toccata also stakes a claim of “first recordings” for these two works, a claim that’s apparently justified, since no other recordings of any of Reicha’s string quartets, let alone these two, are to be found. It doesn’t take much of a leap to establish a connection between Reicha’s quartets and Beethoven’s. The two men were friends, and one has only to look at the publication dates of the two composers’ quartets to note how they leapfrog each other. Group I Beethoven, op. 18 (6); published 1801. Reicha, op. 48 (3); op. 49 (3); published 1804 Reicha, op. 48 (3); op. 49 (3); published 1804 Group II Reicha, op. 52 (1); op. 58 (1); published 1805 Beethoven, op. 59 (3); published 1808 Group III Beethoven, op. 74 (1); published 1810 Beethoven, op. 95 (1); published 1816 Reicha, op. 90 (6); published 1819 Group IV Reicha op. 94 (3); op. 95 (3); published 1824 Beethoven, op. 127 (1); published 1826 Beethoven op. 130–132; 135 (4); published 1827 This is surely not to suggest that Reicha’s efforts in the medium approach Beethoven’s in profundity of thought or significance to the history of music, but rather to note that the two composers were very much aware of each other’s contributions. A truly absorbing Internet article—classical.net/music/comp.lst/articles/reicha/quartets— describes how, beginning in 1997, the author, Ron Drummond, began a quest to track down the parts to Reicha’s 20 published string quartets, then to trace their history and analyze them, and finally, with a group of string- playing friends, to read through them, some perhaps for the first time ever, since there’s no record of them having been performed in Reicha’s lifetime. But what’s particularly fascinating in Drummond’s analysis is the influence Beethoven’s op. 18 quartets seem to have had on Reicha. As Drummond notes, “Five of the quartets [he’s speaking of Reicha’s earliest opp. 48 and 49 sets] share key signatures with the Beethoven. Three of those occur in the same positions in their respective sets: in both sets, No. 2 is in G, No. 4 is in C minor, and No. 6 is in B♭.” Actually, Drummond misspeaks in his web article—only four of Reicha’s early quartets share keys with Beethoven’s op. 18 set—but he corrects the mistake and expands further on the matter in his extensive notes to this album. The keys in the published order of Beethoven’s op.