These three concertos
make ideal disc mates. All the composers
were born within thirteen years of each
other and though stylistically there
may be a diversity of affinities the
programming nevertheless makes perfect
sense.
Stamitz’s concerto
is one of the very best known and admired
from the period and one that’s garnered
a small crop of recordings. In its warm,
excellently crafted way it affords numerous
opportunities for the venturesome violist.
It bears a certain kinship with the
concerted works of Monn, though it also
shows awareness of Mannheim, and has
a buoyant profile. Its high point is
the lyric slow movement though I found
Franz Beyer’s cadenzas rather overlong.
Hoffmeister’s Concerto
is slightly less well known these days
than used to be the case now that Stamitz
seems convincingly to have overtaken
the fluent Rothenburg-born composer
in popularity. Still it has its own
strongly Classically orientated charms
and is topped by its Allegro finale,
full of bold horn harmonies and, if
one discounts some generic orchestral
writing, plenty of opportunities for
the soloist to show off fast passagework.
It sounds in spirit very close to a
Mozart concerto finale. In the slow
movement I felt that the orchestral
textures were rather too opaque and
that a conductor might have separated
them and brought a degree of textual
aeration.
Zelter is by a long
chalk the least well known of the trio
of composers. The opening of his concerto
possesses a rather brusque if ultimately
conformist spirit and sports another
overlong cadenza. But the slow movement
takes us to different, more intriguing
realms. This has a hushed intensity
and a certain classical gravity that
puts one in mind of an operatic scena
– Gluck, if you like, re-clothed. The
finale owes something to Mozart’s Sinfonia
Concertante finale – bouncing, with
witty ritards, and some orchestral winnowing
down of heft to a quintet-like sonority.
If the opening movement had been sharper
and etched more confidently this could
really have been an outstanding discovery.
As it is it’s a splendid addition to
the repertoire and well worth getting
to know, especially if you only know
Zelter as a composer for the voice.
Tabea Zimmermann
has recorded the Stamitz (Hyperion)
as has Ernst Wallfisch, with Faerber
on Vox. The outstanding Czech violist
Jan Pěruška has also recorded it
for Panton, and there’s a Wolfram Christ
traversal on Schwann – and Christ is
worth hearing in anything. Of
the Hoffmeister you could do much worse
than Caussé on EMI though the
splendid Faerber has conducted it for
Nakariakov on Teldec. No one has a rival
Zelter in the current catalogue.
That being the case
I’d encourage you to hear it in a sympathetic
and affectionate performance such as
this. The accent in this disc is on
warmth – tonal and timbral – and you
will derive a lot of pleasure from it.
Jonathan Woolf
Hariolf Schlichtig (viola and director) 
for
details
