Concerto in G

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 early 1770s, the years of his greatest fame and productivity, Hofmann wrote around sixty concertos including a number of double concertos, one of which is scored for violin and violoncello. Hofmann was a very fine violinist and an experienced composer of concertos for both instruments. A concerto for this exact combination of solo instruments, performed oddly enough by "Les deux Frères Hoffmann" on 12 December 1761, appears in Philippe Gumpenhueber's Repertoire for that year. In spite of appearances there is grave doubt as to whether Leopold Hofmann was one of the performers involved. There were several court musicians named Hoffmann (or Hofmann) in Vienna at this time and as far as we know neither of Leopold's two brothers performed professionally. The most likely candidates for this performance are either Anton or Johann Baptist Hoffmann (violin) and Johann Nikolaus Hoffmann (violoncello). The sole surviving copy of the work – a set of contemporary manuscript parts now preserved in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien – is enclosed within a wrapper bearing the performance or acquisition date 1782. Although there is no external evidence to corroborate Hofmann's authorship, the work bears many striking resemblances to his other string concertos and can be accepted as genuine with few qualms. The remarkable cadenzas are surely the work of Hofmann himself.