Antoine
Reicha (Antonin Reicha) (1770 - 1836)
Quintet in
E flat major, Op. 88, No.2
Quintet in
A minor, Op. 100, No.5
When
Simon Reicha, Prague's town piper, died in 1771, his one-year old son Antonin was left in
the care of a mother who showed neither the ability nor the inclination to look after him
properly. As a result, the boy ran away to his paternal grandfather when he was only
eleven years old, and from there was passed into the care of his uncle Josef, a highly
respected cellist, and Konzertmeister at the celebrated court of Oettingen-Wallerstein in
Schwabia. Encouraged by the prospect of a proper education and family life, Antonin set
out on the journey alone, reca1ling later that the worst moment came as he tried to cross
the border at Regensburg. With no documentation and speaking very little German, he waited
until the customs officer had started his lunch and then feigned eye trouble, explaining
that he had his papers somewhere, and wanted to visit a shrine in the hope of a miraculous
cure. The ruse worked, and the bemused official allowed him to cross.
During
the next three years Antonin learned to play the flute, violin and piano, and by 1785,
when Josef was appointed leader of the Elector's orchestra in Bonn, his nephew was
sufficiently accomplished to join him as a violinist and flautist. He can hardly have
hoped for a better opportunity, for while the Elector aimed to develop Bonn as a cultural
centre in the widest sense, he had a particular interest in music and also employed the
young Beethoven as an organist and viola-player. The two young musicians immediately
established a firm friendship, making such progress in their composition lessons with
Christian Neefe that in 1792 both were offered the chance to study with Haydn in Vienna.
Beethoven
took advantage of this opportunity, but Reicha remained in Bonn until 1794, when the city
was occupied by Napoleon's troops and the Elector fled. Josef was too ill to travel, but
fearing that his nephew would be seduced by the French army's revolutionary ideas, he
insisted that Antonin should go to the relative safety of Hamburg. Reicha obeyed, but
although the move gave him the opportunity to abandon orchestral playing in favour of
composition, teaching and philosophy, the town's damp climate affected his health and in
1799 he moved on to Paris.
At first,
Reicha enjoyed considerable popularity in the French capital, but it was not long before
the city's unpredictable politics dragged him down, and in 1801 he left for the relative
stability of Vienna. By now, the once close relationship between Beethoven and Haydn had
soured, but during the next seven years Reicha enjoyed the friendship of both, acting as
interpreter when either received French visitors, and coming to regard Haydn as something
of a role model. He also continued to develop his own philosophy of music and aesthetics,
however, and in 1803 published Praktische Beispiel, a set of thirty-six bizarre fugues for piano which
provide a practical demonstration of his new theory of composition. This involved Reicha,
an ardent champion of change, in extensive experiments with unusual rhythms, time
signatures and harmonies, and led him to argue that if "old" forms such as the
fugue were to reflect modern ideas composers should challenge traditions such as the need
for bar-lines and the assumption that works should start and end in the same key.
The
arrival of Napoleon's troops in Vienna in 1805 once again threatened to disrupt Reicha's
work, and in 1808 he returned to Paris. Despite the support of his many friends there he
was unable to earn a living exclusively as a composer, however, and, changing his name to
Antoine Reicha, he began instead to earn a reputation as an entertaining and instructive
teacher. He also continued to publish theoretical treatises on aesthetics and in 1818 was
appointed to teach composition at the Paris Conservatoire.
By now,
Reicha was a well-respected figure in the French musical establishment, attracting pupils
such as Berlioz, Liszt, Franck and Gounod, and arousing such interest in his compositions
that the promised excitement of a new wind quintet earns him a special reference in
Balzac's fictional work, Les employes. Although
the combination of a flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon was not entirely new, it
still had the advantage of novelty when Reicha began to use it, and a performance of one
of his quintets at Paris's Theatre Favart in 1817 was so well received that all
twenty-four of his works in the genre were played there during the next three years. Four
of the soloists, Joseph Guillou (flute), Gustav Vogt (oboe), Jacques Bouffil (clarinet)
and Louis Dauprat (horn) had studied with Reicha, and with Antoine Henry on bassoon they
greatly impressed a number of critics. "No description, no imagination can do justice
to these compositions," wrote John Sainsbury in 1825. "The effect produced by
the extraordinary combinations of apparently opposite-toned instruments, added to Reicha's
vigorous style of writing and judicious arrangement, have rendered these quintets the
admiration of the musical world."
Such
praise, however, was by no means unanimous. Berlioz, who held negative views on most of
the older Parisian musicians but had a soft spot for his old teacher, found the quintets
"a little cold", and after hearing one at a Philharmonic Society Concert in 1825
a London critic described it as "one of the most intolerable pieces that we were ever
condemned to hear." This view did not prevail, however, and the quintets so inspired
other composers that the combination of flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon was soon
established as a standard chamber ensemble.
Reicha
had written his first wind quintet in 1811, but was not entirely happy with it and after a
careful study of the instruments involved wrote a further pair of "incomparably
superior" works which he subsequently published as Opus 88, Nos. 1 and 2. It is
likely that it was one of these which Guillou, Vogt and Henry played at a student concert
at the Conservatoire on 14th April 1814 with the clarinettist Gabriel Pechignier and the
horn-player Louis Colin. The remaining four quintets in Opus 88 were composed and
published in 1817, and these were then followed by three further sets of six: Opus 91 in
1818, Opus 99 in 1819 and Opus 100 in 1820.
The
quintet Opus 88, No.2, in E flat is a long-standing favourite with
wind-players but is usually played in a cut version which also omits the traditional
repeat at the end of the first movement exposition. The manuscript is lost, but the cut
passages have been restored for this recording by reference to an early printed edition,
and the repeats are played, as their omission is probably a printer's error. Other
features of the first movement include a quotation from Beethoven's horn sonata - a work
which was well known among the many fine players of the instrument in Paris - and Reicha's
free interpretation of traditional sonata form: the ideas from the exposition play very
little part in the development, and are then played in a different order in the
recapitulation. A graceful minuet with two trios is followed by a slow theme with four
variations, and the quintet ends with an irrepressible finale.
Opus 100, No. 5, in
A Minor dates from September 1820. A spacious slow introduction
sets the scene for an expansive first movement, which, like the same movement in Opus 88, No.2, recapitulates irregularly. This is
followed by a second movement whose simple and attractive theme is treated to three
frenetic variations for virtuoso horn, bassoon and oboe, and then to a fourth in which it
is simply rescored. It is then the turn of the clarinet and flute, and the movement ends
with a coda which returns to the mood of the opening. The third movement, a Minuet, is accompanied by a trio based on a strange
fanfare-like motif, and the work ends with a movement which at first suggests sonata-form
but then goes very much its own way.
John
Humphries
The
Michael Thompson Wind Quintet
Michael
Thompson, French Horn
Jonathan
Snowden, Flute
Derek
Wickens, Oboe
Robert
Hill, Clarinet
John
Price, Bassoon
The
Michael Thompson Wind Quintet came into existence under its present name in 1992, when
Barry Tuckwell announced that he was leaving the Wind Quintet that bore his name. Michael
Thompson, who was appointed Principal Horn in the Philharmonia Orchestra by Riccardo Muti
at the age of 21, resigned from the orchestra in 1985 to pursue a solo career, which he
has subsequently done with wide acclaim. Other members of the Quintet include the flautist
Jonathan Snowden, appointed Principal Flute in the Orchestra of Opera North at the age of
21 and soon after to a similar position with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1985 he
became Principal Flute in the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The oboist Derek Wickens was
Principal Oboe of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for eighteen years and since 1981 has
been Principal Oboe of the Opera Nationale at the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels, a
position that allows him more time for solo work and chamber music. He was a founder
member of the Barry Tuckwell Wind Quintet. After two years as Co-Principal Clarinet in the
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Robert Hill joined the London Philharmonic Orchestra as
Principal. He has performed widely with the Nash Ensemble and the London Sinfonietta, of
which he was a founder member. John Price began his orchestral career in 1967 as Principal
Bassoon in the Ulster Orchestra, moving a year later to a similar position with the Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1977hejoined the London Philharmonic Orchestra as Principal
Bassoon, a position he still holds. He has made solo appearances with the orchestra and a
number of chamber music recordings, notably with the London Sinfonietta and the London
Philharmonic Wind Ensemble.