Ensemble Schönbrunn - Anton Reicha: Out of the Shadow of the Masters (2006)

This recording may not bring Anton Reicha "out of the shadow of the masters," as it promises to do. But Reicha, although he was recognized in his own time as one of Beethoven's most important contemporaries, remains a shadowy figure today, and listeners interested in the Viennese scene will be both intrigued and delighted by this pair of trios for flute, violin, and cello. Reicha emerges as a composer who, like Beethoven and Hummel, grappled with the problem of formal expansion even in the realm of chamber music, and his solutions were original ones. There's none of Beethoven's harmonic drama here, but the music is never diffuse. The cello plays an important role as Reicha tries to outline large musical spaces, and he handles the tricky problem of opposing a symphonic cello and a rather meek flute with considerable subtlety, especially in the Grand Trio for flute, violin, and cello that closes out the disc. The music is also full of structural surprises. The opening Eighteen Variations and a Fantasia on Mozart's Theme "Se vuol ballare" in G major, Op. 51, are unusually laid out, with the Fantasia in the middle as a kind of slow movement. The opening set of variations is rather formal, but when the Mozart tune returns after the Fantasia it seems liberated: bits of it are batted back and forth among the instruments. In the Grand Trio the longest movement, by far, is the Menuetto, which runs through a big tripartite structure, complete with repeats, before getting to its sizable trio section. Reicha's textures are lively enough to lend interest to the music throughout. The recording by Holland's Ensemble Schönbrunn is ideal, with pleasantly intimate sound and obvious attention to the problems of balance in these works. A modest recording, but a masterly one.