Wölfl

In the 250th Beethoven anniversary year, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has chosen this programme of works by contemporary composers to illuminate and contextualize Beethovens extraordinary output for piano. In his explanatory note for the album, the pianist writes: Just as a mountain peak is always surrounded by other perhaps less lofty but no less fascinating summits, the major works of Beethoven are not isolated rock formations rising from the desert, but, as it were, Himalayas, forming part of a range in which other mountains might be the best pieces by contemporaries such as Clementi, Hummel, Dussek, and Wölfl. These composers all knew Beethoven well and were in contact with one another.

Joseph Wölfl, once a popular composer and pianist, hailed from Salzburg. When Wölfl was born in 1773 his brilliant countryman Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was employed by the archbishop of Salzburg…

Our previous release of three piano concertos by Joseph Wölfl featured the recording premieres of 'mirthful pieces in the style of Mozart and Early Viennese Classicism'. And our second new release with more concertos by Wölfl – this time congenially interpreted by Nastaša Veljković – shows just what magnificent music this composer working in Beethoven's immediate musical environment was writing. As in Wölfl's second piano concerto, so too in his third such work: he follows the tradition shaped by Mozart in matters of form. However, here a tendency toward formal trimming is already in evidence, a tendency that Wölfl pursued in his later London concertos and very decidedly so in the Concerto da camera WoO 97 for piano, flute, and strings. What we have in this work, which was published in London in 1810, is in every respect a reduced concerto, not only in the dimensions of the orchestral ensemble but also in length, though the overall formal scheme is retained. The solos in particular are more tightly constructed and more strongly integrated into the orchestral part – with the small ensemble size contributing its share here.