Reinecke: Complete Cello Sonatas Ana Turkalj & Aleck Carratta

• Carl Heinrich Reinecke (1824 - 1910): Cello Sonata No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 42:
• 1 Reinecke: Cello Sonata No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 42: I. Allegro moderato 07:18
• 2 Reinecke: Cello Sonata No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 42: II. Lento ma non troppo - Intermezzo. Moderato 04:54
• 3 Reinecke: Cello Sonata No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 42: III. Finale. Allegro molto ed appassionato 04:59
• Cello Sonata No. 2 in D Major, Op. 89:
• 4 Reinecke: Cello Sonata No. 2 in D Major, Op. 89: I. Lento - Allegro molto moderato 07:34
• 5 Reinecke: Cello Sonata No. 2 in D Major, Op. 89: II. Andante 05:02
• 6 Reinecke: Cello Sonata No. 2 in D Major, Op. 89: III. Finale. Moderato 07:37
• Cello Sonata No. 3 in G Major, Op. 238:
• 7 Reinecke: Cello Sonata No. 3 in G Major, Op. 238: I. Adagio - Allegro moderato 09:49
• 8 Reinecke: Cello Sonata No. 3 in G Major, Op. 238: II. Andante mesto 05:27
• 9 Reinecke: Cello Sonata No. 3 in G Major, Op. 238: III. Finale. Allegro 05:22
• Total Runtime 58:02

Info for Reinecke: Complete Cello Sonatas

The fundamentally Romantic idiom of Carl Reinecke coexists with the twilight of the 19th century and the dawn of the 20th century. He was a precocious and prolific composer, who wrote music from an early age after his birth in the North German town of Altona in 1924.

The last of his three cello sonatas was composed in the year of 1898 once he had retired from teaching duties at the Leipzig Conservatoire to become its director, while the first of them was composed in 1848, when Reinecke was serving as a young and brilliantly accomplished court pianist in Copenhagen. The trio of sonatas thus spans his maturity and effectively traces certain strands of his development as a composer. All three of them hew to the standard quick-slow-quick three-movement form in which the sonata’s argument is outlined by a discursive first movement, deepened by a reflective intermezzo and rounded off with an extrovert rondo finale.

When it was belatedly published in 1855, the A minor Sonata won such popularity that Reinecke was soon asked to make a violin version of the piece. The dedicatee was Andreas Grabau, a cellist in the Gewandhaus Orchestra of which Mendelssohn was director, and indeed, the sonata rejoices in a quickness of thought and lively spirit which Felix would have recognized and appreciated.

The D major Sonata Op.89 was composed in 1866 and published by Breitkopf & Härtel with a dedication to Carl Voigt (either the founder-director of the main choral society in Hamburg or the merchant-husband of the pianist Henriette Voigt). Is this a ‘midde-aged’ Reinecke? Certainly the first movement stands back from the high drama of the First Sonata, or at any rate gives way periodically to a very cellistic mode of introspection, inviting comparison in this regard with the recently composed E minor Cello Sonata of Brahms.

In this regard, the dedication of the Third Sonata to the memory of Brahms, who had died in April the previous year, might be regarded as a hostage to fortune. Yet while a pall of introspection hangs over the recitative-like introduction, worthy of Brahms’s own late Four Serious Songs, Reinecke was no slavish epigone, and the sonata is the work of a lifetime spent refining the craft of composition in himself and in others.

Carl Reinecke (1824-1910) was born in Altona, near Hamburg. Under his father’s tutelage he studied the violin, but later turned his attention to the piano. He began to compose at the age of seven, and his first public appearance as a pianist was when he was twelve years old. At the age of 19, he undertook his first concert tour as a pianist. In 1843 he settled in Leipzig where he studied under Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann and Franz Liszt. In 1847 Reinecke was appointed Court Pianist for Christian VIII in Copenhagen. After posts in Paris, Cologne and Breslau he was appointed director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra concerts in Leipzig, and professor of composition and piano at the Conservatorium. He led the orchestra for more than three decades, until 1895. He conducted the premiere of Brahms's A German Requiem.

Reinecke’s style is firmly rooted in the German Romanticism, and he is a direct heir of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms. This new recording presents his three Cello Sonatas, full blooded romantic works in their sweeping passion and tender lyricism.

Played by Croatian cellist Ana Turkalj. She took master classes with Wolfgang Böttcher, Seiji Ozawa, Bernard Greenhouse and Nicolas Altstaedt, and is a winner of several international competitions. Pianist Aleck Carratta graduated with honours at the Conservatories of Hamburg and Zürich, and attended master classes of Lilya Zilberstein, Roberto Plano, Filippo Gamba, Aleksandar Madžar, and Christian Zacharias.

Ana Turkalj, cello
Aleck Carratta, piano

Ana Turkalj
Croatian cellist Ana Turkalj was born in Hainburg on the Danube because of the Yugoslav Wars and grew up in Austria. As a child, she lay in her brother's cello case, listening to his playing, and discovered her love for music. As her extraordinary musical talent developed, she attended master classes with renowned musicians* and won an above-average number of cello competition awards in Croatia, Italy and Austria as well as a special prize as a pianist in Vienna.

She is a laureate of the Austrian competition "Prima la Musica" (2002, 2004, 2009), the European competition "Alfredo e Vanda Marcosig" in Gorizia, (2005, 2008, 2009), the international competition in Dubrovnik "Rudolf Matz" (2006, 2007), the "Antonio Janigro" in Porec (2006) and the cello competition in Liezen (2002, 2008).

The Zurich University of the Arts accepted her as a young student in 2009, where she began her actual studies with Prof. Orfeo Mandozzi two years later. In 2013 she moved to the Music Academy Basel to Ivan Monighetti, Rafael Rosenfeld, Thomas Demenga and later to the "School of Excellence" course with Danjulo Ishizaka.

She received fruitful impulses in master classes with Götz Teutsch, Wolfgang Böttcher, Seiji Ozawa, Arto Noras, Bernard Greenhouse and Nicolas Altstaedt, among others.

Further competition prizes followed: First Prizes at the Austrian Lion's Club and the Swiss Youth Music Competition, as well as the Recognition Prize of the Basel Orchestra Society.

In 2018, she won the internship in the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and was honored as a rising musician with the "Golden Medal" at the "4th International Manhattan Competition 2019".

Ana Turkalj is a member of the Atl-Trio, the Alean Duo, which was a prize winner at the 2019 Orpheus Competition, and the duo "A.T.ea for two", which released a CD on "Lion Crown's music records" in 2019.

International concert engagements as soloist and chamber musician have taken her to famous music centers, including Vienna, Salzburg, Florence, Venice, Verona, Rome, Ljubljana, Barcelona, London, New York, Boston, Tokyo and Mexico City. She currently has recording contracts with the labels "Brilliant Classics" and "Naxos".

"Ana Turkalj is musically versatile and stands out not only as a gifted instrumentalist on the cello and piano, but also has a recognizable sound and a special expressiveness on the cello.

Her musical sophistication and tonal variety come through colorfully in interpretations of various musical styles..."

Götz Teutsch, principal cellist with the Berlin Philharmonic 1970-1976

"Soloist Ana Turkalj interpreted Dvorka's Cello Concerto with verve, tonal sense and emotional depth...with stirring ease and technical aplomb she spanned the arc through the three wide-ranging movements without losing her sense of the precious details within the great whole. For the great performance, the audience asked her to come on stage for two encores!" (Niederämter Anzeiger 2019)

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