Cello Concertino 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. During the 1760s and early1770s, the years of his greatest fame and productivity, Hofmann wrote around sixty concertos including twenty works styled ‘Concertino’ for two, three and four solo instruments and orchestra. These works represent a hybrid form of symphony and concerto although they bear few real resemblances to the symphonie concertante which enjoyed such popularity in Mannheim and Paris. First movements tend to be written sonata-form, or rounded binary form, often with structurally significant orchestral statements, and the remaining movements, with the exception of the Minuet and Trio, organized along the more conventional sonata-ritornello principles of the composer’s solo concertos. Next to nothing is known about the origins of these works although the survival of most of them from the same source - the music library of Count Christian Clam Gallas - suggests that they may have been commissioned by the same individual. The present work is listed in the Quartbuch catalogue along with three other Hofmann concertini which fixes its composition date at not later than ca 1775. Although the solo parts are not as demanding as those found in Hofmann’s larger concerti they are skilfully and idiomatically written for the instrument and contain many attractive and interesting musical ideas