Toccatas, Partitas and Suites Digipack

Description

Johann Adam Reincken was likely born between 1630 and 1640 in Deventer, Netherlands. He began his musical studies with the city’s organist, then, in 1654, went to perfect his skills with the great Scheidemann in Hamburg. In 1657, he became his assistant and succeeded him upon his death in 1663. From then on, his popularity continued to grow, making him famous throughout Northern Europe. With the support of his fortune, seemingly amassed through foreign appeals to music, as well as with the help of two jurists and senators of the city, he founded the Hamburg Opera in 1678, the first establishment of its kind in Germany, which he directed until 1685.
He then devoted himself to his activities as an organist, composer, and pedagogue until the end of his life in 1722.
Despite his longevity, he left us very few works. Aside from his Hortus Musicus, published in 1687 and whose six sonatas are a gem of the genre, Reincken must not have felt the need to have his compositions engraved. Fortunately for us, a few manuscript copies have survived. The most beautiful are certainly those collected by Johann Christoph Bach (1671-1721) in the Möller and Andreas Bach Buch manuscripts […]
To date, his corpus includes twelve pieces for harpsichord and only three for organ, a rather meager result considering the roughly sixty years during which he played these instruments daily. With the six sonatas for two violins, viola, and continuo from the Hortus Musicus, that is all we possess. But the great quality of these pieces, both in terms of composition and what they require for their execution, attests to Reincken's talent and the validity of his reputation. Among the works that make up this disc, I have chosen to defend several whose authenticity has not yet been established, for even if they are not by him (we may never know), they are nonetheless beautiful and fit within the musical universe in which he evolved.