Carl Reinecke

Romantic composer Carl Reinecke was musically conservative but was admired nonetheless by Mendelssohn, the Schumanns, and Liszt for his piano skills and great affinity for teaching. His students at the Leipzig Conservatory were given a thorough musical education, and he raised the performance standards of all the ensembles he directed, including the Gewandhaus Orchestra. During his lifetime, his piano works naturally were admired, but since his death, it is his chamber music (the flute sonata "Undine," the trios for winds and piano) and his harp, flute, and piano concertos that have come to the fore as his best works, although he also wrote hundreds of art songs.