Reinhard Goebel is renowned for his work in early music and with modern orchestras. Since he founded his ensemble Musica Antiqua Köln half a century ago, he has continually redefined performance practice and transferred his approach to modern orchestras.

For over 30 years, Musica Antiqua Köln was Germany's most virtuosic and influential baroque ensemble, setting the highest standards of historical performance practice and releasing a vast number of recordings. In 2022, Archiv Produktion released a 75-CD box set of Reinhard's complete recordings with Musica Antiqua Köln in honour of his 70th birthday.

Following his celebrated chamber music work in the 1980s and 90s, including Bach's Musical Offering and the violin-harpsichord sonatas of Bach, Telemann and Corrette, and since the turn of the millennium Reinhard has been heading towards a new medium: the modern orchestra. In search of the true sound, he transferred the virtues of early music to modern strings with the same uncompromising attitude. At the podium of various radio symphony orchestras in Germany, he brought Mannheim music by Cannabich and Johann Christian Bach to new life, stirred up Viennese classical music and pointed out the forgotten composers in the shadow of Mozart. He still had new things to say about the most famous Mozart works, and more and more orchestras are following him.