Ignaz Lachner

Ignaz’s is probably the least well-documented life of the Lachner brothers who numbered Franz and Vinzenz and who were born in Bavaria. Ignaz was a string player – violin and viola – and worked in Munich until Franz managed to secure him a job in Vienna in 1826. He composed and travelled widely, spending a period in Frankfurt between 1861 and 1875 where he conducted Wagner operas which he then cut to fit local taste. Though he achieved a degree of renown during his lifetime Lachner’s works have sunk almost without trace and I doubt whether many, if any, are now in print.

Mozart himself saw the advantages of creating more accessible versions of his concertos in reduced instrumentation. Ignaz Lachner followed common 19th-century practice by leaving the piano parts of these concertos intact and making splendid transcriptions of the orchestra parts using only a string quartet with added bass. K. 488 and K. 491 are two of Mozart’s greatest and most popular piano concertos. These chamber versions throw an intense and intimate new light on familiar music. Alon Goldstein is one of the most original and sensitive pianists of his generation, admired for his musical intelligence and dynamic personality. His career as a soloist has taken him all over the world, working with leading orchestras and conductors.

So greatly did Ignaz Lachner venerate Mozart that he arranged twelve of the 27 piano concertos for performance by small ensembles. Lachner, who had known Schubert in Vienna and had met Beethoven, was superbly equipped for these arrangements ensuring that the string quintet of soloists, with the double bass largely doubling the cello role, sounds thoroughly idiomatic. The three selected works represent the different sized orchestras Mozart employed, K. 246 being the most lightly scored, and K. 488 the most complex. The anonymous arrangement of excerpts from Die Zauberflote proves equally vital and attractive.

Mozart’s return to Vienna in 1781 initiated a remarkable period of inventiveness and productivity. In late 1784 he wrote the Piano Concerto No. 19 in F major, a work Mozart performed in Frankfurt on the occasion of Leopold II’s election as Holy Roman Emperor and which is notable for its rhythmic vivacity and sense of colour. In 1786 he wrote the Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major – a work that stretched the concerto genre considerably with its operatic qualities and dramatic dialogue. Ignaz Lachner’s ingenious transcriptions show a complete grasp of Mozart’s idiom, incorporating much instrumental detail and reinventing the music’s underlying dramatic scheme within a chamber context.

Hans August Alexander Bronsart von Schellendorf (generally known as Hans von Bronsart), once a force to be reckoned with in the musical life of his native Germany, is now hardly a footnote in most reference books. Record collectors of a certain vintage will have bought Michael Ponti playing the same F sharp minor concerto presented here, a recording made back in 1973 for the Vox Candide label with the Westphalian Symphony Orchestra under Richard Kapp, one of very few recordings of any of Bronsart’s work. Otherwise, it is probably only keen Lisztians who will know that having revised his piano concerto No 2 in 1856, Liszt chose Bronsart to give the premiere (Weimar, 7 January 1857) with himself as conductor. When the final version was published in 1863, Bronsart was the dedicatee. These were significant gestures. Immediately, one is intrigued. Who was this Bronsart of whom Liszt thought so highly?