Cello Concerto in C

A near contemporary and rival of Haydn, Leopold Hofmann was held in the highest regard in his native Vienna where he served as Kapellmeister at St Stephen’s Cathedral, a position to which Mozart might have succeeded had he lived. Hofmann was a prolific composer of instrumental music and his solo concertos, of which there are nearly sixty for various instruments – including eight for the violoncello - are among the finest written in Vienna during the mid-18th century. As there are no documented performances of any of these works (and Hofmann himself is not known to have played the instrument) it is possible only to hazard a guess at who might have appeared as soloists. Possible candidates include Luigi Boccherini, who played in the Viennese theatre orchestras during the early 1760s, Francesco Alborea, alias Francischello/Francisghella, and Joseph Weigl. Weigl, Haydn's former principal cellist in the Esterházy court orchestra and the recipient of his C major Concerto, moved to Vienna in 1769 and is known to have been a member of Hofmann's orchestra at St Peter's as late as 1783. The present concerto, advertised in Supplement V (1770) of the Breitkopf Catalogue, probably dates from the second half of the 1760s. It is a small-scale work, scored for solo cello, two violins and basso, but, like all the composer's concertos, it makes considerable technical and musical demands on the soloist.