Adolf Reichel, an unabashed imitator

While creative geniuses challenge conventions, redefine the essence of their art, and reinvent its language, more modest artists flourish in their shadow, content to follow the paths laid out by their role models, to use their idiom, and to move—for and with the audience—on familiar ground. It would be unfair to look down on them or to underestimate the role they play in spreading artistic movements—a role that was indispensable before the advent of recording, reproduction, and transmission technologies.

Adolf Reichel (1816–1896), principal conductor of the Bern Symphony Orchestra and the Bern Conservatory for more than twenty years, was one of those artists who skillfully and effortlessly employed the musical language of the late Classical era and early Romanticism. After studying in Berlin and Dresden, where he immersed himself in the works of Mendelssohn and Carl Maria von Weber, he lived in Paris, where he was inspired by Chopin and Rossini.

Every movement, every theme, every transition shows just how much Reichel loved and admired these composers—as well as the indispensable Mozart and Beethoven—and how convincingly he employed their forms and techniques. His ideas are certainly not new, but they are smoothly articulated and skillfully combined, so that everything sounds right, everything is just right and «in its place»; his works are conventional in the best sense of the word, clearly by choice and not by default.

This laid-back conservatism is all the more remarkable given that Reichel was politically progressive and remained friends with Bakunin throughout his life.

A style that straddles the styles of the young Beethoven and Weber

Reichel's manuscripts, which had been lost for over a century, were recently rediscovered, and their publication has begun:

Benjamin Engeli (piano) and Bernhard Röthlisberger (clarinet) present two sonatas for clarinet and piano, in a style that straddles the gap between the early Beethoven and Carl Maria von Weber, verging on pastiche, as well as a Mazurka and a Prelude and Fugue for piano, charming tributes to Chopin and Bach, on a CD of high musical and technical quality.

The Bern Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Christoph-Mathias Mueller, has recorded the two symphonies that Reichel completed, with verve and great attention to detail. The production is musically polished and technically flawless, at times even bordering on being too smooth—which, ultimately, fits the composer’s character well.

Both CDs are well documented and provide—in French as well—a solid foundation of information on the life and work of Adolf Reichel.

Adolf Reichel: Sonatas and Miniatures. Bernhard Röthlisberger, clarinet; Benjamin Engeli, piano. Schweizer Fonogramm SF0021

Adolf Reichel: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2. Bern Symphony Orchestra; Christoph-Mathias Mueller, conductor. Schweizer Fonogramm SF0023