Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752-1814) - Concerto per il Violino concertato (1773)
Performers: Ernö Sebestyen (violin); RIAS-Sinfonietta Berlin
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German composer, political writer and writer on music. Son of a
lutenist, Johann Reichardt (c.1720-1780), he received his early musical
education from his father, as well as Franz Veichtner and Carl Gottlieb
Richter. He attended Königsberg university, where he became acquainted
with the philosophy of Emanuel Kant, but in 1771 he embarked on an
extensive tour of Germany to further his own musical education. In 1775
he applied for and won the post of Kapellmeister to Frederick II though
he had little experience in musical composition, and in 1777 he married
Julianne Benda, daughter of Franz Benda and composer in her own right.
Tours to Italy and Vienna in 1783 (where he became friends with Joseph
Martin Kraus) as well as France and England in 1785 both broadened his
education and served to implement a Concert spirituel in Berlin. In 1791
he retired to his country home in Giebichenstein due to illness, and
shortly thereafter he was denounced as a revolutionary. After the
Napoleonic invasion, he was offered the post of musical director in
Kassel, but he spent the last years of his life in poverty. Reichardt
can be seen as one of the most intellectual composers of the period. His
views on musical life, published as a series of letters, evoke Charles
Burney, while his 1774 'Über die deutsche komische Oper' must be seen as
a seminal work on the genre. He was close friends with Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller, working with the former in 1789
on the Singspiel Claudine von Villa Bella. His musical style is often
dramatic, with orchestration that foreshadows the Romantic period, and
he can be considered both an adherent of the Sturm und Drang style and
one of the principal composers of Lieder of the Berlin School. His
compositions include 1500 Lieder, 29 operas (mostly Singspiels), 11 sets
of incidental music to plays, two ballets, two oratorios, 13 German
cantatas, a Requiem, two Te Deums, eight Psalms, nine symphonies, 11
concertos (nine for keyboard), three quintets, a quartet, 15 trios, 26
keyboard sonatas, 16 violin sonatas, and over 100 horn duets.
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