Adolf Reichel

Emil Vollenweider: Adolf Reichel (no year)

Adolf Reichel (born August 30, 1816 in Tursnitz ( Turznice in Polish), West Prussia ; died March 5, 1896 in Bern ) was a German-Swiss conductor and composer.

Life

Adolf Reichel was the son of an East Elbe German landowning 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 to the young Hereditary Prince Georg von Sachsen-Meiningen . He traveled to Vienna, Bern and Brussels and from 1844 lived as a piano teacher in Paris , where he communicated with George Sand and Frédéric Chopin . In Dresden in 1842 he met the professional revolutionary and anarchist Michail Bakunin , with whom he had a lifelong friendship. In his vicinity he met opposition figures such as Georg Herwegh , Gottfried Kinkel , Karl Marx , Georg Weber , Wassili Petrowitsch Botkin , Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Richard Wagner in Paris , without himself actively participating in the 1848 revolution . In 1850 he married Marija Kasparovna Ern (1823-1916), whom he had met while working for Alexander Herzen . They had four sons, among them the Swiss judge and politician Alexander Reichel .

In 1857 he went to the private Dresden Conservatory as a composition teacher , where he also directed the Dreyssig Singing Academy . In view of the repressive political climate in Dresden, he followed a call to Bern as music director in 1867 . He was naturalized in Oberburg in 1869 . 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 in Bern . He composed piano and choral songs and larger choral and orchestral works, including a German mass, symphonies and overtures. Of his around 600 works in the classic and early romantic styles, many were printed by Bote & Bock , Breitkopf & Härtel , Simon Richault and other music publishers during his lifetime .

Most of the now reconstructed estate is in the library of the Bern University of the Arts , his handwritten memoirs in the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis in Amsterdam.

Works

Sheet music and audio files by Adolf Reichel in the International Music Score Library Project

literature

Regula Puskás: Reichel, Adolf. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
Max Sommerhalder : The composer Adolf Reichel (1816–1896). (PDF; 99 kB) 2015.
Jaap Klosterman: Phantoms. From the papers of Adolf Reichel. In: Ursula Becker, Heiner M. Becker, Jaap Kloosterman (editor): No obituary! Articles about and for Götz Langkau . IISG, Amsterdam 2003, pp. 64-69.

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ For the year of birth there is also the apparently incorrect information 1820.
↑ Max Sommerhalder : The classicist and the revolutionary. The Swiss composer Adolf Reichel was the closest friend of the anarchist Michail Bakunin. In: NZZ , October 29, 2016, p. 27

personal data
SURNAME	Reichel, Adolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Reichel, Adolf Heinrich Johann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German-Swiss conductor and composer
DATE OF BIRTH	August 30, 1816
PLACE OF BIRTH	Tursnitz (Polish: Turznice), West Prussia
DATE OF DEATH	March 5, 1896
Place of death	Bern

[1] For the year of birth there is also the apparently incorrect information 1820.

[2] Max Sommerhalder : The classicist and the revolutionary. The Swiss composer Adolf Reichel was the closest friend of the anarchist Michail Bakunin. In: NZZ , October 29, 2016, p. 27