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 VI (1771) of the Breitkopf Catalogue, was probably composed several years earlier. The work is unique among Hofmann’s violoncello concertos for its unusual deployment of the orchestra. During the solo sections and for the entire second movement, which omits the conventional ritornello structure, the violoncello is accompanied by two solo violins only.