Anton Reicha- 12 Duos pour violon & Violoncello, precedes d’un petit Traite… Op. 84, Bk. 1 & 2. (Paris : Gambaro, [n.d.])Peter Sheppard Skaerved-Violin, Beate Altenberg-Cello

Duo No 4 E Flat Major Adagio-Tempo di Minuetto 

The 4th Duo is the first to include a movement away from the home key-the ‘trio’ section of the second movement is a very delicate C minor.Indeed its tentative feeling is pre-empted in the initial Adagio. The Tempo di Minuetto movement is (perhaps) deliberately written in the a style recalling Beethoven’s early chamber style-it is uncannily similar to an E Flat major  duo fragment in the ‘Kafka Miscellany’ of Beethoven fragments and manuscripts in the British library, which dates from the rich early days of collaboration in Bonn, when Beethoven, Reicha, with Andreas and Bernhard Romberg, were playing together in Bonn.

Reicha’s grave stone in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris