Cello Concerto in D

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 composition date of the present work is unknown but it is larger in scale than most of the other concertos and its technical complexities greater. On stylistic grounds it is tempting to place the work in the early 1770s - that is towards the end of Hofmann's active career as a composer - and its occasional technical similarities with the Haydn C major Concerto might be an indication that it was composed after Weigl’s arrival in Vienna.