Haydn Klöcker

Carl Stamitz (1745-1805) - with his father Johann Wenzel aka Jan Vaclav and his brother Anton one of the founders and developers of the so-called "Mannheim School", so essential in the growth of the classical symphony - belongs to that throng of composers from the classical era that my have met with great success and popularity during their lifetime, but are now viewed as "minor" ones, dwarfed by the shadows of Haydn and Mozart, and then Beethoven.

On this 1974 recording, Beethoven's Septet, Op. 20 – despised by the composer but still a popular piece of light music – is paired with the less familiar Sextet, Op. 71. The Sextet is an early work despite its high opus number, first written around the time Beethoven moved to Vienna but not offered to a publisher until the era of the mighty Symphony No. 5. This work too Beethoven disparaged, but as annotator Gerhard Pätzig rightly noted, he knew he was releasing something worthwhile – an exceptionally accomplished realization of Classical models.

Said to have been Haydn's favourite pupil Franciszek Lessel has so far evaded a revival of his music. Dieter Klöcker, the director of Consortium Classicum, has assembled scores of the Wind Sextets from the manuscript parts that survive in the Vienna Conservatoire library. The prospect of three wind sextets for two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns and double bass by an unknown composer whose productive life reached almost forty years into the nineteenth century may not fill you with transports of delight. In fact this is fresh and airy music. Lessel is quite startling at the start of Sextet No. 4 with the strangest dissonant grumble before sweeping the listener up into a typically effervescent Mozartean Allegro molto.

All but forgotten now, in his day Anton Eberl (1765-1807) was well-known and considered a musical heir of Mozart. Indeed as recently as 1944 one of his symphonies was published as being a newly discovered work of Mozart. During his lifetime a number of his compositions were published under Mozart's name, some of them through as many a fourteen subsequent editions. It is easy to understand why his music could have been mistaken for that of the Salzburg master's. Indeed, he may actually have studied for a time with Mozart who in any case befriended and encouraged him.