Carl Reinecke (1824-1910) belongs to the generation of Romantic composers whose works avoided the spectacular but revealed genuine good taste and an appreciation of the past. Reinecke’s extensive opus, comprises almost 300 works in practically every musical genre: operas, symphonies, chamber music, spiritual and secular choral works, songs, organ and piano music.

Robert Schumann dedicated his Four Fugues Op. 72 to Reinecke, praising him as “a young composer to my liking”. But except for a few lyrical piano pieces, Reinecke’s works hardly took account of Schumann’s pianistic innovations. Rather, his compositions unmistakably betray his deep admiration for Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and the classical composers, whose sense of form runs like a red thread through all of Reinecke’s works. He did not refute reproaches concerning his retrospectice orientation; indeed, he would not have “admonished anyone for having called me an epigone”.

Carl Reinecke was long active as a piano teacher before succeeding Julius Rietz in 1860 as director of the Leipzig Conservatory. Although the labelling of the various formal parts of these sonatinas destines them for pedagogical purposes, their title “Sonatina” raises them to the level of short recital pieces.

Reinecke’s severe formal conception can be illustrated by the regularity of the opening movements of all three sonatinas: exposition of two contrasting themes (with repetition); development involving both themes; recapitulation which takes up the exposition and leads it back to the main key.