Bakunin is afraid of getting toothache
A composer from Bern was the companion and “musical pastor” of the Russian thinker and revolutionary. An altogether impossible friendship.
Max Sommerhalder
You will find him on a few internet platforms, but certainly not in any actual music encyclopaedia: Bern-born composer and conductor Adolf Reichel (1816-1896). On 30 August this year would he have been 200 years old. Now his body of works (more than 600 pieces) has reemerged; the music library of the Bern University of the Arts acquired it. Disappointed will be those who expect revolutionary sounds, but pleasantly surprised, however, those who fear the uninteresting. The author retraces the composer’s friendship with the anarchist thinker Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), among other things.
