These must be among the earliest of oboe quintets, either on or off record. They are also among the least familiar; but of course not at all necessarily among the least rewarding on that account. Most rewarding is the Crussel; and it is good to see such a long-neglected composer now at last coming into his own. A divertimento as such is far from unusual for wind; but this one, in a single continuous movement (with varied sections) certainly is. The sections add up to a normal balance of (roughly) quick-slow-quick, the slow particularly effective in its evocation of Mozart's favourite G minor laments by deserted sopranos (there is a difference, though: probably none of Mozart's sopranos ever played the oboe so well as this). Throughout Crusell, himself a wind-player, treates the oboe as leader, and throughout he writes the most elegant and varied of music.

Bereits das erste Album von Reinhard Goebels Aufnahmeprojekt "Beethovens Welt" mit Violinkonzerten von Franz Clement (1780-1842) erhielt große Beachtung und exzellente Rezensionen weltweit. Die Welt am Sonntag widmete dem Komponisten sogar zwei Seiten als herausragende Entdeckung und urteilte abschließend: "Wenn die Entdeckung Beethoven-Zeitgenossen, die sich gerade Goebel fürs Beethoven-Jahr auf die Fahnen geschrieben hat, so weitergeht, wird es ein feines Jahr." Auch SWR2 lobte das Projekt: "Reinhard Goebel verspricht nach diesen beiden Violinkonzerten von Clement noch weitere spannende Erkundungen aus Beethovens Welt."

Antonín Reicha’s music continues to inhabit the fringes of the active repertoire of everyone except perhaps wind quintets, which is a pity. Certainly Reicha was one of the most interesting and inventive composers of his era, and one of the few lesser-known personalities of the Classical Period aside from Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Rossini whose music deserves to be revived and enjoyed. In 1826 he composed this enormous Piano Quintet, and there’s not a second of ‘dead’ music in any of its nearly 43 minutes. The sheer forward energy of the opening movement is truly extraordinary, with countless surprising turns of phrase, while the succeeding Lento poco andante offers some gorgeous experiments in texture (for starters, check out the central cello solo backed by pizzicato strings and graceful piano figurations).

Reinhard Goebels Aufnahmeprojekt "Beethovens Welt" erhält begeisterten Zuspruch in der Presse: "Zum Beethoven-Jahr keine neuen Lesarten von Beethovens Werk zu bieten, sondern Raritäten aus seinem Umfeld, ist eine Idee, wie sie typisch ist für Reinhard Goebel, den unermüdlichen Entdecker."(Rondo)

Czech composer Reicha's modern fame rests almost solely on his being the creator of the wind quintet, of which he composed more than 20. But he was a keenly imaginative, even experimental composer and theoretician whose omnivorous curiosity encompassed a vivid sense of humor. Like most Czech musicians, he had a special skill in writing for wind instruments, but he was also interested in such "modern" effects as quarter-tones, bi-tonality, and complex rhythms. The Overture in D, for example, is composed entirely in 5/8 time, and its lopsided rhythm really sounds like Mozart with a limp. All of the music on this delightful disc will thrill fans of the classical period–there really was more to it than Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.

The Serbian-American Paris-based pianist Ivan Ilic has signed a new multi-album recording contract with Chandos Records, following internationally acclaimed recordings of works by Godowsky and Feldman. His first project on the label is a series devoted to the solo piano works of the Czech composer Antoine Reicha, a contemporary and lifelong friend of Beethoven. Although best known for his contributions to the repertoire for wind quintet, Reicha wrote vast quantities of solo piano music, most of which has never been recorded. The manuscripts, preserved in the Bibliotheque nationale de France, were published only recently.

For this his third volume of works by Antoine Reicha, the pianist Ivan Ilic turns to one of the composer’s most extraordinary works, L’Art de varier, Op. 57. ‘The Art of Variation’ consists of fifty-seven variations on a theme (that the number of variations match the opus number is not a coincidence) and was composed in 1802 – 03, at the beginning of the six-year period which Reicha spent in Vienna, where he studied with Haydn and re-kindled his previous friendship with Beethoven. The set is remarkable for its scale and invention. Ivan Ilic describes the work as the missing link between Bach’s ‘Goldberg’ Variations and Beethoven’s ‘Diabelli’ Variations, which was certainly influenced by Reicha’s work. The recording was made at Potton Hall in Suffolk, on a Steinway Model D grand piano.

The eagerly awaited volume 2 in the fascinating exploration of Antoine Reicha's keyboard music by the trailblazing pianist Ivan Ilic is now out! Ilic here digs into a crucial aspect of Antoine Reicha's music: counterpoint and the manner in which Bach's music served as a point of departure for Reicha's eclectic, fertile mind and wide variety of musical styles. If most of these etudes are made up of a Prelude paired with a Fugue, their variety offers the album great diversity, and unveils the compositional genius of Antoine Reicha: here are unexpected moods and textures, sophisticated canons, cheeky invertible counterpoint, chaconnes and minuet-like character pieces, even a piece the only unifying characteristic of which seems to be its tumbling scales in dotted rhythm.

The two Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Flute and for two Cellos by Antoine Reicha show an astonishing balance between innovation and reflection. They bear witness to an outstanding virtuosity and art of composition, which revolutionise forms through spectacular, enthusiasm-provoking lines of execution and through novelties of writing that impact their deeper structures. A composer who established a link between the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Vienna and Paris, Joseph Haydn and César Franck (one of the last among his many pupils), Reicha can no longer be reduced to his theoretical and didactic dimension alone: his extensive work, still too little known, continues to surprise us.