The piano music of the Czech-born composer Antoine Reicha (1770–1836) – friend of Haydn and Beethoven, teacher of Berlioz, Liszt, Franck and many others – is one of the best-kept secrets in music. Reicha was an important influence on composers of the next generation but, apart from an innovative set of fugues, his piano works have remained almost unknown since his own day.

Encompassing Baroque practices as well as looking forward to the twentieth century, they are full of harmonic and other surprises that show this liveliest of musical minds at work. Reicha’s twenty Études ou Exercices, recorded here for the first time, manage to combine his maverick inventiveness with a considerable degree of charm.

Henrik Löwenmark was born in Gothenburg and educated at the university there but has long since lived in Stockholm. Since his graduation he has been active as freelance musician. His interest in Reicha began in the 1980s and in 1999 he started to collect all the piano music that that had not been published in modern editions – almost all the extant music. In 2006 he finished his master’s thesis, The Piano Music of Anton Reicha, at the University of Gothenburg.