Flute Concerto in E minor

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, are among the finest written in Vienna during the mid-18th century. The Flute Concerto in E minor is the only instrumental work of Hofmann’s in the minor mode to survive. The driving intensity of the third movement reveals a side of the composer that is otherwise unsuspected and leaves one regretting that more works of its kind have not come down to us. Like all of Hofmann’s flute concertos, however, e1 is distinguished by its wonderfully idiomatic writing for the solo instrument and its sensitive handling of musical textures.