When it was belatedly published in 1855, the A minor Sonata won such popularity that Reinecke was soon asked to make a violin version of the piece. The dedicatee was Andreas Grabau, a cellist in the Gewandhaus Orchestra of which Mendelssohn was director, and indeed, the sonata rejoices in a quickness of thought and lively spirit which Felix would have recognized and appreciated.

The D major Sonata Op.89 was composed in 1866 and published by Breitkopf & Härtel with a dedication to Carl Voigt (either the founder-director of the main choral society in Hamburg or the merchant-husband of the pianist Henriette Voigt). Is this a ‘midde-aged’ Reinecke? Certainly the first movement stands back from the high drama of the First Sonata, or at any rate gives way periodically to a very cellistic mode of introspection, inviting comparison in this regard with the recently composed E minor Cello Sonata of Brahms.

In this regard, the dedication of the Third Sonata to the memory of Brahms, who had died in April the previous year, might be regarded as a hostage to fortune. Yet while a pall of introspection hangs over the recitative-like introduction, worthy of Brahms’s own late Four Serious Songs, Reinecke was no slavish epigone, and the sonata is the work of a lifetime spent refining the craft of composition in himself and in others.