Flute Concerto in Eb

Johann Baptist Wanhal (1739-1813), one of the most gifted and historically important contemporaries of Haydn and Mozart, was a prolific and popular composer of concertos. His total output, which runs to over sixty works, can be compared with that of Leopold Hofmann whose concertos also enjoyed great popularity during the 1760s and 1770s. There is little way of knowing for whom the majority of them were written, given the scope of his freelance activities, but the fact that so many of the works were published – or found their way into contemporary thematic catalogues – suggests that he sought a wide public for them. While few copies of the present work have come down to us, the fact that it was issued by two different Parisian publishers during the composer’s lifetime is a fair indication that it was reasonably well known. On the basis of style the work appears to be one of Wanhal’s later concertos although a precise composition date is impossible to determine. Although the cellos and basses are not wholly independent, the bass is omitted from time to time during the solo sections. The inclusion of oboes and horns is more typical of Wanhal than most composers of the period. His Viennese colleagues typically either omit the winds entirely or restrict themselves to a pair of horns in the outer movements only whereas Wanhal not only includes oboes in the orchestra but also employs the full wind section in the slow movement.