Anton Reicha was born in Prague in 1770, passed through Austria and Germany, earning the friendship and respect of both Haydn and Beethoven along the way, and ended up as a professor of composition at the Paris Conservatory, where his students included Berlioz, Franck, Liszt, and Gounod. His music is mostly forgotten except for the wind quintets explored in the series of which this disc is a part, and even these, composed between 1810 and 1820, are rarely played -- they are long, thickly textured, and technically difficult, ...
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Anton Reicha was born in Prague in 1770, passed through Austria and Germany, earning the friendship and respect of both Haydn and Beethoven along the way, and ended up as a professor of composition at the Paris Conservatory, where his students included Berlioz, Franck, Liszt, and Gounod. His music is mostly forgotten except for the wind quintets explored in the series of which this disc is a part, and even these, composed between 1810 and 1820, are rarely played -- they are long, thickly textured, and technically difficult, all qualities that give wind players fits, and never give them a rest. For the listener they fall into no easy niche; they're too dense to serve as light music, but they don't have Beethoven's philosophical ambitions. But never mind all that! The Westwood Wind Quintet -- flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon -- has unearthed works that can rightly be called lost masterpieces. The first movement of the Quintet in C major, Op. 99/1, shows what Reicha learned from Beethoven: the way...
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Add this copy of Anton Reicha: Woodwind Quintets, Vol. 7, Opus 99, Nos. to cart. $9.25, like new condition, Sold by Streetlight_Records rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Santa Cruz, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2006 by Crystal Records.
