Luogo e data di registrazione		Bennebroek (Holland): - Dicembre 1967 / Gennaio 1968 (Hummel, Haydn) - Maggio 1965 (Boccherini)
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer		Wolf Erichson
	Prima Edizione LP		Telefunken "Das Alte Werk" | SAWT 9529-A | 1 LP - durata 55' 52" | (p) 1968 | ANA
	Edizione CD		Non si è a conoscenza di una ripubblicazione in Compact Disc
	Cover		L. Génée, Louis XVI's violin virtuoso. Painting by Dumont 1791.
	Note		-

Joseph Haydn’s A major violin concerto has come down to us only in a contemporary set of parts in the Benedictine monastery of Melk (hence the sub-title “Melk Concerto”). Chronologically the work belongs to that group - not really small but unfortunately surviving only in fragments - of solo concertos that Haydn wrote in his early years as a kapellmeister for the soloists of the Prince’s orchestra in Eszterháza and Eisenstadt: more precisely, it belongs to the violin concertos which were probably intended for Haydn’s leading violinist Luigi Tomasini, to whom the slow movements of many of the early quartets also owe their concerto-type form. For the relatively early date of composition (before 1770-71) the work gives a surprisingly “progressive” effect, more developed in any case that most of the other early concertos. The classical concerto form and the serious, no longer purely social inflection which the mature Mozart was to perfect in his Viennese piano concertos was already manifest in the basic features of the early concerto, and also extensively developed in detail; the remains of the late Baroque concerto type, still clearly to be seen in Haydn’s first concertos, are eliminated, and the technique of thematic development and motivic treatment, which Haydn was developing almost simultaneously in his string quartets Op. 9 and Op. 17, already begins to permeate the lyrical development technique of the galant style, although the pre-classical movement forms - a slow, “singing” Allegro, an Adagio and a fast Allegro in 3/4 time - are not yet brought into question. Only the orchestration still gives a pre-classical effect (strings and two horns in A alto; the reconstructed oboe parts in the new edition are missing in the Melk set of parts and are therefore omitted in our recording). The characteristic sound of Boccherini’s music, his inexhaustibly flowing melodiousness, almost voluptuous but at the same time disciplined by supreme elegance and entirely “courtly” formality, his unusual harmonies, with their tendency towards sudden colourful swerves and changes into the minor, his unproblematic and elegant formal skill, all mould the G major cello concerto into a work clearly recognisable by its scoring (string orchestra without wind) as typically pre-classical. The work was presumably written during Boccherini’s time in Spain, and hence for his own use, in his post as chamber composer to the Infante Don Luis (1769-85); it therefore belongs to perhaps the most happy and untroubled time of his career, at first so rich in fame, and at the end of his life so darkened by sorrow and dire distress. This music reflects with unsurpassable elegance the late sparkle of Europe’s courts: the ideal of a cultivated and extremely refined musical entertainment (subtly relishing that very refinement) appears here in its purest and most ripe - even over-ripe - expression; worlds apart from the profound musical thought processes of Haydn and the anxiously nervous intensity of expression of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, which both herald the classical period in music at the same time as Boccherini’s compositions. It is yet of a deceptive melodiousness and a captivating, melancholy grace which even today no sensitive listener will miss. Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s trumpet concerto is, after Haydn’s concerto in E flat (1796), the second great trumpet concerto of the Viennese classical period, and like it was written for the Viennese court-trumpeter Anton Weidinger, who played it for the first time on 1 January 1804 “alla tavola di Corte”. Weidinger had been experimenting since 1770 with transferring woodwind key-mechanism to the trumpet and thereby giving the instrument the greatest possible chromatic range. The instrument for which Haydn’s concerto was intended was an earlier model of that which Weidinger finally developed in 1801; on the other hand Hummel, who at the end of 1803 set out to compete with Haydn’s work, could call on an almost fully chromatic instrument. Both concertos show clearly enough that Weidinger was not only a talented instrument-builder but also an exceptional virtuoso, who evidently excelled equally in playing cantabile melodies and quick figurations. It is no surprise that the then 25-year-old Hummel, one year before he succeeded Haydn (on the latter’s recommendation) as kapellmeister to Prince Eszterházy in Eisenstadt, held closely to his great exemplar in composition: the strains of Haydn, particularly in the rondo-finale, are plainly to be heard here. It is all the more noteworthy how Hummel, at that time already very famous as a pianist but hardly known as a composer, makes an effort to go his own way and to establish his individuality in relation to his other exemplar, Mozart. Thus the expansive first movement, scored in strong colours with the full classical orchestra, follows the example of the Haydn concerto and the soloist’s particular strengths in the alternation of martial-virtuoso and cantabile solo episodes; yet even its first theme, still more clearly than the whole very symphonic and relatively strictly organised construction of the movement and the delicate woodwind instrumentation, shows unmistakable vestiges of Mozart. The Andante begins as a delicate Romance in A (flat) minor, in which the trumpet is treated just like a vocal instrument and is accompanied almost only by strings. Not until the middle of the movement does the wind enter - with splendid effect as the music changes into A (flat) major - and a half-close leads into the finale, which releases a wholly Haydnesque whirling rondo with brilliant military-signals, turbulent figurations, thundering tutti and the obligatory minor episode, and which finally demands all the soloist’s technical resources (and all the technical possibilities of his keyed trumpet) for figurations, trills and chromatic passages. Ludwig Finscher The history of the solo concerto between the Baroque and Classical periods, between Bach and Mozart, is a history of crisis and experiment, which mirrors more clearly than almost any other musical form the crises and changes in the modes of society in the 18th century. The solo concerto of the Baroque era, as it had developed at the end of the 17th century in Italy and, since the beginning of the 18th century, had spread throughout musical Europe, had been an eminently social form of music-making: the concerto principle - in its clearly defined formal construction, with regular exchanges between tutti and soli, and in its virtuoso concertante prominence of the soloist within a movement which was all the more strictly organised - clearly enough, and not unexpectedly, reflected social elements, principles of the aristocracy’s order and culture, and the firm conception of music as a sign of social status, as an entertaining and decorative accomplishment. Almost as soon as it had become established however, this type of concerto was brought into question from two sides: from the concertos that Bach was writing, and from the rise of sonata form and the principle of thematic development. Bach’s solo- and group-concertos differed so greatly from the newly created and sanctioned concerto form and concerto principles, and superimposed on both such an unprecedented compactness of musical texture, that the concerto as a social art became questionable from within - although this supreme example of the thorough transformation of a form at first remained without historical effect. From the time of Philipp Emanuel Bach at latest, the principle of thematic development and, linked with it, sonata form began to undermine the concerto principle and the concerto form from without and to turn the concerto, like all other instrumental forms down to the sphere of the simple “divertimento”, into a symphonic form. The end of this process is not seen until the piano concertos of Mozart’s maturity, where for a brief and great moment of history social entertainment and individuality of content, the exhibition of virtuosity and a symphonic-sonata-type structure, a concertante form of dialogue and thematic development were equally balanced. The cost of this difficult reconciliation of the concerto and the sonata was the loss of the original concerto idea - the idea of treating simple, monodic and immediately intelligible musical ideas in concertante dialogue. The Italian concerto form, with its clear contrasts between monothematic tutti and extensive soli based on figurations, had given perfect musical expression to this principle; the classical concerto, with its polythematic tutti exposition, with the repetition of this exposition in the solo part in modified sonata-form, and with its thematic development and varied structure of contrasts already in this part of the work, allowed the principle of concerto-writing and the structure of the sonata-form movement to become separated to such an extent that the unity clearly lacking in both had to be reconciled with hybrid structural complications. The peculiarly “synthetic” character of the musical works of this Classical period, its constant threat from uncontrolled excesses in construction on the one hand and in subject-matter on the other, and its established position, extremely complicated musically and socially, become clearer in this field of the concerto than in almost any other instrumental form of the time. Which makes it all the more evident that concerto-writing between Bach and Mozart cannot be reduced to a simple common factor, and that it fluctuates between a retrospective conservation of form and its growing freedom, between a strongly social tone and extreme subjectivity, in infinitely many and varied degrees. Of this range of possibilities the present recording shows three examples, which lie between the extremes in a “well-tempered” middle position, which are clearly stamped throughout with the “social” tone but which are none the less individually distinguishable and rich in form. Ludwig Finscher