Luogo e data di registrazione		-
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer		-
	Prima Edizione LP		Telefunken - SAT 22 516 - (1 LP) - durata 51' 27" - (p) 1969 - Analogico
	Edizione "Reference" CD		Tedec - 8.43629 ZS - (1 CD) - LC 3706 - durata 51' 27" - (c) 1987 - AAD
	Cover		Foto mit freundlicher Genehmigung des Museums fèr Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg
	Note		-

These three horn concertos are representative of a music performed in a festive, 18th century Rococo setting, in the palaces of counts, barons and princes who, themselves, were often accomplished musicians and played with the orchestra. This seldom comprised more than ten players and was frequently joined by a concertante quartet or soloist, The sort of music produced at such soirées was light-hearted and careiree. Within the clearly defined forms of the different movements the melody and harmony move with agile ease. The spirited Allegro always starts off with an ordrestral introduction. Following this, the soloist predominant, the thematic material is played and worked out in a development section. A recapitulation with a cadenza by the soloist leads into the finale. The adagio mood oi a romanza allows of greater emotional depth in the second movement. The ingenious, virtuose alternation of main subject and episodes lends gaiety to the third and concluding movement, a rondo. The horn has a long history as a solo instrument. From time immemorial its powerful carrying tone, varying between a dull grumble and a sharp blast, has served in sacred and mystic rites, in the hunt and in war. The first ‘natural’ horn possessed only few notes. It was not until the horn was brought out of its occult world of calls and signals to he used with other instruments for the purpose of making music that. to extend its range, the mechanism had to be improved upon by means of valves and keys. The horn became ‘domesticated’ and since the 18th century has appeared in the orchestra as a solo instrument. It has since been perfected to include the whole chromatic scale and in the horn concertos presented in this recording it is a pleasure to listen the sound quality and ease of tone production. The Horn Concerto No. i in D major by Haydn was composed in 1762. It was in that year that an outstanding player of the hunting horn joined the Esterhazy court orchestra of which Haydn was the Kapellmeister. Haydn composed four horn concertos tor him, and surprised the court with them. Two of them are no longer extant. In No. 1 the horn is not called upon to perform any feats of particular brilliance, but has a considerable say in each movement. A press notice of the year 1792 describes how the essence of Haydn's music finds expression in this work too: "His work has beauty, order, unity and a line and noble simplicity that the listener experiences even before he becomes aware of it." Franz Danzi, the son of an Italian musician, was born in Mannheim, where at this time the local orchestra under Stamitz was laying the foundations of the renowned ‘Mannheim School‘. This influence naturally made itself felt in Danzi'a work and finds expression in the E major Horn Concerto. The congenial melody of the horn part receives sparse orchestral accompaniment. In fact it is not until the interludes that the orchestra makes any musical statement of its own or takes up the solo material. In a cadenza at the close of the first movement the horn contributes some reflective nuances and is quickly submerged again under the orchestra. A section in a minor kay gives the second movement, a romanza, its elegiac nature. Then follows a highspirited rondo in strict form: main subject and episode linked by a cadanza appear in two three-part sections with a minor passage in the middle. Danzi lived in Munich, Stuttgart and Karlsruhe working as a musician and composer at the courts of the lord spiritual and temporal of the time. He achieved historical significance with his operas and Singspiele which, overtaking other contemporary works, anticipated Carl Maria von Weber and the Romantic movement. Franz Anton Rößler, a Bohemian, who called himself Antoni Rosetti, was a popular composer in Rococo times. He is acclaimed as a leading syrnphonist and, like Haydn and Mozart, followed the principle of the essential unity of the different movements in a symphonic composition, thus making his contribution to a classical form that was to become standard. His music has a primitive strength, a certain naive simplicity about it and a recurring passionate, dramatic impulse. In Gerber‘s Musical-Biographical Dictionary of 1792 we also find: "It is undeniable that a pleasantly-caressing, sweetly dallying tone pervades his works, and one is particulariy struck by the extreme beauty of his compositions for wind instruments, which he invariably employs in the orchestra with a masterly hand." His reputation secured for him the post of Kapellmeister at the court of the Prlnce of Ludwigslust in Mecklenburg "where ha had the honour and pleasure of finding and conducting one og Germany's finest orchestras, rich in men of great merit." Otto v. Irmer