1824–1910 · Germany
Carl Reinecke (1824–1910) was a German composer, pianist and conductor who was born in Altona and worked in Leipzig. For thirty-five years he led the Gewandhaus Orchestra and taught at the conservatory, where Grieg, Janacek and Albeniz were among his students. The sheet music on this site includes his fourth piano concerto in a version for two pianos.
Carl Heinrich Carsten Reinecke was born on 23 June 1824 in Altona, which is now a district of Hamburg. At that time the town was under Danish rule, so technically Carl was born a Dane. His father, Johann Rudolf Reinecke, was a music teacher who also wrote about music.
The boy had his first music lessons from his father at the age of six. Violin came first, and later he turned to the piano. Composing began when he was seven.
As a boy Carl made his debut as a pianist in Altona and then began to travel around Europe giving concerts. He was praised as a graceful performer of Mozart. His idols were Clara Wieck and Franz Liszt, but his modest and reserved nature did not suit the role of a celebrated virtuoso.
From 1843 to 1846 Reinecke lived in Leipzig on a scholarship from King Christian VIII of Denmark and studied piano and composition. He got to know many musicians and the Leipzig salons, and on 16 November 1843 he made his first appearance at the Gewandhaus, playing Mendelssohn's Serenade and Allegro giocoso, Op. 43, for piano and orchestra.
At that time Felix Mendelssohn was the conductor of the Gewandhaus, and he helped the young musician to get public engagements. During the same years Reinecke got to know Robert Schumann. The works of both composers made a strong impression on him and noticeably influenced his own music.
Later Reinecke became a court pianist in Denmark. He found no post in Leipzig, and in 1849 he went to Bremen, where he conducted and composed orchestral works.
Paris also found a place in his life: on the recommendation of Liszt, Hector Berlioz invited him there, and Reinecke performed in Paris as a pianist. There he met again Ferdinand Hiller, whom he knew from Leipzig and who had by then become director of the conservatory in Cologne.
From 1851 Reinecke taught piano at the Cologne Conservatory and at times stood in for its head, Ferdinand Hiller, at the conductor's desk. He often saw Robert Schumann, who lived nearby in Dusseldorf, and got to know the young Johannes Brahms.
From 1854 to 1859 he worked as a conductor in Barmen, which is now part of Wuppertal. In 1859 Reinecke became music director in Breslau and organised subscription concerts there.
In that same year, 1859, the Gewandhaus Orchestra offered Reinecke the post of its leader. He took it up in 1860 and led the orchestra for 35 years, until 1895. At the same time he taught piano and composition at the Leipzig Conservatory, and in 1885 he was given the title of professor. From 1897 to 1902 Reinecke was director of the conservatory.
He conducted premieres. In 1869 the orchestra gave the first complete performance of Brahms's A German Requiem, in seven movements. In addition, the Gewandhaus Quartet gave the first performance of his piano quintet in 1865 and of his D major string quartet in 1892.
Grieg, Janacek, Albeniz, Sullivan, Bruch, Julius Roentgen and many others studied in Reinecke's class, so musicians from several countries learned from him. He taught for 35 years, until 1902.
In 1883 and 1889 Reinecke performed in Russia as a conductor of his own works and as a pianist. In 1885 he took part in a conference in Vienna at which a single standard tuning pitch was adopted.
Carl's mother, Johanna Henriette Dorothea Wetegrove, died in 1828. In 1852 Reinecke married Betty Hansen; she died in 1859, shortly before he took up his post in Leipzig. In 1860 his half-sister Mathilde looked after his three children.
On 7 October 1860, at Reinecke's second subscription concert as conductor of the Gewandhaus, a young singer from Berlin, Charlotte Scharnke, made her debut there. In August 1861 she became his second wife, and they had two daughters and two sons. The sons Franz and Carl later ran the Leipzig publishing house Gebruder Reinecke. Charlotte died in 1868.
In 1872 Reinecke married for the third time, to Margarethe Schifflin, who came from Krefeld; they had two daughters. In all, Reinecke had nine children.
In 1895 Reinecke was unexpectedly dismissed as head of the Gewandhaus, which hurt him; his successor was Arthur Nikisch. He now had time for long concert tours as a pianist, including trips to England. He performed at the Gewandhaus in 1904, 1906 and 1909, and in 1906 he played Mozart's Concerto for two pianos in E-flat major with his student Fritz von Bose.
After leaving the conservatory in 1902 he devoted himself to composition; in all, he left about three hundred works. At the age of 80 Reinecke recorded several pieces on piano rolls for the Welte-Mignon company, and he later recorded many more for the Aeolian and Hupfeld companies.
Reinecke's playing belonged to a school marked by grace and neatness. For a time he was probably without equal as a Mozart interpreter and as an accompanist. His command of the finer points of the instrument was highly valued.
Carl Reinecke died on 10 March 1910 in Leipzig at the age of 85. He was laid to rest in the south cemetery.
Reinecke held to conservative traditions, whose centre was the Leipzig Conservatory. The Viennese classics, above all Mozart, remained his models, and he worked on the interpretation of their music to the end of his life. His own works were strongly influenced by Schumann, and also by Chopin, Brahms and Mendelssohn. As a composer for the piano he stands very close to Schumann, although in later works, such as the Piano Concerto in C major, Op. 144, the influence of Chopin and Brahms can be heard.
He wrote about three hundred works in almost every genre: operas, symphonies, concertos, oratorios and cantatas, chamber music, song cycles, songs and choral music. Among his orchestral works the best known are the Symphony No. 3 in G minor, Op. 227, and the Harp Concerto in E minor, Op. 182. Among his works for the flute, the sonata Undine, Op. 167, the Ballade, Op. 288, and the Flute Concerto in D major, Op. 283, of 1908 are well known. His children's songs are also known.
He wrote four piano concertos: in F-sharp minor, Op. 72, 1860; in E minor, Op. 120, 1872; in C major, Op. 144, 1877; and in B minor, Op. 254, 1900. He also wrote many cadenzas for other composers' concertos, a large set of which was published as Op. 87, and a Piano Sonata for the left hand, Op. 179. He arranged Beethoven's Triple Concerto for piano trio.
Reinecke's chamber music is varied: three sonatas for cello and piano, five string quartets, a trio for piano, oboe and horn, Op. 188, a sextet and an octet for wind instruments. For viola and piano he wrote three fantasy pieces, Op. 43.
In 1888 the publisher Julius Heinrich Zimmermann brought out Reinecke's piano cycle Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe (in English, from the cradle to the grave), Op. 202, which quickly became popular.
Reinecke also wrote books on the interpretation of Mozart's concertos and Beethoven's sonatas.
The site has his Piano Concerto No. 4 in B minor, Op. 254, in a version for two pianos (Piano Concerto No. 4 in B minor, 2 Pianos). The edition is graded medium-plus on the site's scale. If you want to get to know Reinecke, you can start with it.