Adolf Reichel: Symphony No. 2 in C major (1869)

Adolf Reichel (1816-1896) Symphony No. 2 in C major (1869) 1. Allegro 00:00 2. Andante 10:42 3. Scherzo: Allegro non troppo presto 19:17 4. Finale: Allegro 26:58 Hanover Radio Orchestra Nicolaus Eschbacher, conductor North German Radio recording Adolf Reichel (born August 30, 1816 in Turcznitz, West Prussia, died March 5, 1896 in Bern) was a German-Swiss conductor and composer. Adolf Reichel was a son of an East Elbe German landlord family in West Prussia. He studied composition with Siegfried Dehn in Berlin, piano with Ludwig Berger and instrumentation with Carl Gottlieb Reissiger in Dresden. He found his first job as a music teacher of the young hereditary prince Georg von Sachsen-Meiningen. He traveled to Vienna, Berne and Brussels and lived from 1844 as a piano teacher in Paris, where he frequented George Sand and Frédéric Chopin. In Dresden in 1842 he had met the professional revolutionary and anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, with whom he had a lifelong friendship. In his circle he met in Paris on oppositionists such as Georg Herwegh, Gottfried Kinkel, Karl Marx, Georg Weber, Vasily Petrovich Botkin, Pierre -Joseph Proudhon and Richard Wagner, without that he himself actively participated in the 1848 Revolution. In 1850 he and Marija Kasparovna Ern (1823-1916), whom he had met as an employee of Alexander Hearts. They had four sons, among them the Swiss judge and politician Alexander Reichel. In 1857 he joined the private Dresden Conservatory as a composition teacher and also directed the Dreyssigsche Singakademie. In view of the perceived repressive political climate in Dresden, he followed in 1867 a reputation as music director to Bern. He was naturalized in 1869 in Oberburg. Until 1884/1888 he was director of the Bern Symphony Orchestra, the music school of the Bernische Musikgesellschaft (BMG) and the choir of the Cäcilienverein. He composed piano and choral songs and major choral and orchestral works, including a Deutsche Messe, symphonies and overtures. Of his approximately 600 works in the style of classical and early romanticism, many were printed during his lifetime by Bote & Bock, Breitkopf & Härtel, Simon Richault and other music publishers. The now reconstructed estate is located for the most part in the library of the Bern University of the Arts, his handwritten memoirs in the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis in Amsterdam. (Ref: Wikipedia)