Leopold Hofmann

The music director of St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, the city of his birth, Leopold Hofmann (1738-1793) was a prolific composer. The son of a highly educated civil servant and a student of Georg Wagensil, he wrote dozens of symphonies, much chamber music and about 60 concertos, including at least 13 for the flute. Insistent repeated notes in the upper strings set the stage for the flute entrance in the opening `Allegro moderato' in the G Major concerto. Over a walking bass line, the glittering flute dances in and out of the accompanying strings, sometimes soaring above them, at others engaging in delicate interplay.

Leopold Hofmann ( 1738-1793 )was a composer at the time of Mozart and Haydn, along with some 30 other composers who took musical development from the late Baroque into the Classical Period. Hofmann was born before Mozart, and died after Mozart died. These composer's creations were rarely played after their deaths, because of the absolute genius of Mozart and Haydn. Indeed, until Chandos and Naxos recently recorded many of these lessor known musician's works, most of the world was completely ignorant of their originality and beauty.

A new Naxos recording offering two of Hofmann's oboe concerti and two concerti for oboe and harpsichord proves that the prolific Viennese composer could write nice tunes and develop them with spiffy efficiency. Both technical bravura and the expressive colours of the oboe are well explored in these conventional but vivacious three-movement concerti. Stefan Schilli (principal oboe of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra), Jeno Jando (harpsichord) and the Nicolaus Esterhazy Sinfonia under Bela Drahos play with superb panache and discipline; the sound engineering is wonderfully transparent and detailed notes are included.

Written by a contemporary of Mozart, these are wonderfully pleasing pieces.Some of the movements such as the last movement of the B-flat major concerto and the middle movement of the G major concerto are outstanding. The performance is very good and McAslan, the violinist, is outstanding (clean and expressive).

Sol Gabetta - Hofmann Hadyn Mozart
Sol Gabetta / Kammerorchester Basel / Sergio Ciomei
FLAC, EAC, LOG & CUE | Full Artwork | Size: 480 MB + Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: RCA Red Seal 88697523552 | Country/Year: Europe 2009
Genre: Classical | Hoster: FP/FF

…For this set of Classical concertos, Gabetta plays with an appropriately lean, focused sound that allows for exceptionally clean articulation and simplicity in phrasing. The precision of intonation and right-arm technique especially shines through in the little-heard Hofmann concerto and brings excitement and interest anew to the popular Haydn C major concerto. An all-around pleasing disc, this album is especially suited to listeners unfamiliar with the Hofmann concerto.

Most of Haydn's concertos are early works, written in the years immediately before or after his engagement at the Esterhazy court in 1761. During that time, he composed four violin concertos, of which three-all except Hob.VIIa, No.2 in D major - survive, none of them in autograph form. Hob.VIIa No.3, in A major turned up only in 1949.

As Jan de Winne comments, the golden age of the transverse flute was 1740–80—though it hadn't done badly for many decades before that, no small thanks to mechanical improvements and the influential encouragement of, amongst others, Frederick the Great and prince elector Karl Theodor in Mannheim, both of whom were flautists…
– John Duarte, Gramophone

Mannheim school refers to both the orchestral techniques pioneered by the court orchestra of Mannheim in the latter half of the 18th century as well as the group of composers who wrote such music for the orchestra of Mannheim and others....