Reber: Trios No. 2, 4 & 6 Trio Elegiaque

• 1 I. Allegro 06:32
• 2 II. Allegretto un poco andantino 03:13
• 3 III. Sherzo 02:57
• 4 IV. Andante - Allegro 06:35
• 5 I. Allegro moderato 09:05
• 6 II. Andantino 07:41
• 7 III. Allegro non troppo 03:50
• 8 IV. Très accentué, sans vitesse 05:35
• 9 I. Allegro ma non troppo 05:48
• 10 II. Larghetto non tanto 08:06
• 11 III. Allegro vivo 03:18
• 12 IV. Allegro con brio 05:26
• Total Runtime 01:08:06

Info for Reber: Trios No. 2, 4 & 6

‘There is in this music an abundance of intimate melodies, a plenitude of emotion, a desire for a better world, an aspiration of the soul, an elevation towards God, all this expressed in forms that are most pure, most beautiful and most chaste; all this sustained by the most virile imagination.’

It was in these terms that the daily paper La Quotidienne referred in 1834 to the music of Napoléon-Henri Reber. Born in Mulhouse in 1807, Reber had in fact been originally destined for a quite different career, in industry. However, a few years earlier, in 1828, the young apprentice chemist, from a prominent family in Alsace, had been discovered for his musical gifts and sent to Paris, to be at once accepted into the Conservatory. There he studied composition with Reicha and most notably with Lesueur, then a teacher of great repute who had counted Berlioz and Ambroise Thomas among his pupils.

An artiste of some austerity, favouring the symphony and chamber music, Reber nonetheless composed several comic operas at a time when success was to be found on the operatic stage: La Nuit de Noël (1848, libretto by Scribe), Le Père Gaillard in 1852, the following year the charming Papillotes de M. Benoît and in 1857 Les Dames capitaines. And yet, thoughtful by nature rather than histrionic, Reber devoted himself more to instrumental music, and it was these compositions that earned him his appointment in 1853 to the Institute and in 1862 to the Conservatory as composition teacher (in the same year publishing a Traité d’Harmonie), and lastly in 1872 his decoration as Of cier de la Légion d’Honneur. Among his pupils were Adolphe Danhauser, Benjamin Godard, Pablo de Sarasate, Wladyslaw Zelenski and Jules Massenet, the latter praising in later years the ‘exquisite and delicate’ character of his teacher’s music.

Trio Élégiaque:
François Dumont, piano
Philippe Aïche, violin
Virginie Constant, cello

No biography found.

Booklet for Reber: Trios No. 2, 4 & 6