Georg Christoph WAGENSEIL (1715-1777)
Concertos for Organ
Concerto no.3 in F [17:58]
Concerto no.5 in G [15:13]
Concerto no.2 in C [12:39]
Concerto no.6 in A [16:36]
Elisabeth Ullmann (organ)
Piccolo Concerto Wien/Roberto Sensi
rec. Protestant Church, Rust, Austria, September 2002. DDD
ACCENT ACC 24248 [62:27]
Georg Wagenseil is one of those myriad composers who lurk at the peripheries
of the 18th century repertoire. One or other work of his - usually the Alto
Trombone Concerto in E flat or the Harp Concerto in G - pops up here and there
on various recordings, whereas monographs like this new Accent release are
few and far between. Half a dozen years ago CPO committed a mini-series of
two volumes to some of his Symphonies, and one or two other labels have recorded
clusters of Concertos, including indeed Accent: ACC 24186 featured Wagenseil's
imaginative Concerto for oboe, bassoon, winds, strings and continuo in E flat.
There seems to be one other CD of Organ Concertos, issued by the German label
EBS (6089) in the 1990s, still available over the internet and despite the
numbering system used, all different works to those in the present recording.
This is in fact a re-release, having originally been issued on the Italian
Symphonia label a decade ago (SY 01194).
Wagenseil's relative neglect - or reputation for mediocrity - is something
of a puzzle, because he was not only a renowned keyboard virtuoso and pedagogue,
but his music was held in considerable esteem in his lifetime - by the likes
of Charles Burney, Haydn and Mozart. Undoubtedly, his prolific production
played a role in later critical hubris: unless going by the name of Haydn,
anyone who writes nearly a hundred Symphonies, the same number again of Concertos,
liturgical works, keyboard pieces and more, must surely be writing by numbers
to some degree. There is also the consideration that Wagenseil's mature music
is almost quintessentially galant in style - for some critics a musical Buridan's
Ass conservatively static between the Baroque and the Classical.
Yet in fairness to Wagenseil, he was a teacher and there is understandably
an element of didacticism in his numerous keyboard Concertos. The 'orchestra'
is thus usually a chamber ensemble - Piccolo Concerto Wien employs seven players
for this recording - that plays a fairly subsidiary role to the soloist, who
provides flourishes of figurations over chiefly pedagogic rhythms and harmonies.
Wagenseil's keyboard Concertos include at least two sets of six that might
be performed on the organ. The present set are taken from the 'Six Concertos
for the Harpsichord or Organ with Accompanyments for Two Violins and a Bass',
published in London around 1765 by John Walsh, who also published Handel's
Organ Concertos, with which Wagenseil's are loosely contemporaneous.
The four works heard here, splendidly performed on period instruments by the
hugely experienced Austrian organist Elisabeth Ullmann and 18th-century specialists
Piccolo Concerto Wien, are structurally and harmonically similar to each other
- an upbeat major key mood, three movements, a fast opener and minuet finale
sandwiching a longer andante, even dynamics etc. Yet for all their undoubted
textbook straightforwardness, they are utterly winsome, with an appealing
stylistic tisane of the German/Austrian, Italian and French piling the foot-tapping
rhythms and catchy melodies high.
The music is lovingly recorded in an intimate acoustic. The well-written
booklet
notes are in English, French and German and offer a decent biographical
summary
of the composer. Rather surprisingly there is no information on Ullmann or
Piccolo
Concerto Wien.
Byzantion
Collected reviews and contact at artmusicreviews.co.uk
Utterly winsome music with appealing foot-tapping rhythms and catchy melodies piled high.