Beethoven and Reicha became lifelong friends when they met as 15-year-old musicians in Reicha’s uncle’s orchestra. Neefe was also in the orchestra, and it is thought may have taught them both. Reicha took lessons in Vienna from Salieri, Albrechtsberger and Michael Haydn, and was a devoted friend to the aged Joseph Haydn, whom he’d met in Bonn and Hamburg before Vienna, and to whom he introduced Cherubini. Liszt (in his teens), Berlioz, Gounod, Onslow and Franck were among his students at the Paris Conservatoire. Mendelssohn also encountered him in Paris, disparaging him as ‘the wild huntsman.’