Radioservis releases Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra recording of Rejcha’s symphonies
Antonín Rejcha (1770–1836) was a composer, teacher and theoretician of music who was active in Bonn, Hamburg and Vienna. In 1808, he settled for good in Paris. There he reached the important positions of professor, and later director, of the Paris Conservatory. Among his students were Hector Berlioz, César Franck, Charles Gounod and Ferenc Liszt.
Rejcha wrote hundreds of compositions of various kinds and genres, from songs and chorales to instrumental music to cantatas and operas. In terms of both number of pieces and significance, orchestral music occupies a less important place in his oeuvre. Unlike his revolutionarily fearless approach to piano fugues, his ten or so symphonies were knowingly indebted to Haydn and Mozart. Rejcha could not in any case have been inspired by anything “more modern”; as researchers have established, he wrote his first two symphonies in Hamburg before October 1797, i.e., two years before Beethoven wrote his first symphony.
None of Rejcha’s other symphonies surpassed the aesthetic framework of Beethoven’s first symphonic pieces either. However, we cannot deny their very full-bodied melodic invention, expressive and suggestive thematic contrasts, and frequently novel sound combinations. For this reason, they are worth remembering in the form of the most recent recording by the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ondřej Kukal.
