Double Violin Concerto in D

Dittersdorf (1739-1799) was one of the most prolific and versatile of Haydn’s and Mozart’s Viennese contemporaries. He was a formidable violinist – certainly the foremost virtuoso in Vienna during the early 1760s – and composed a substantial number of concertos for his own use particularly early in his career when he was seeking to establish his reputation as a composer. Unlike the Double Concerto in D (Krebs 155 – Lane 2) which this work resembles in many details, the C major Concerto was not advertised in the Breitkopf Catalogue and the case for establishing its authenticity rests jointly on its close stylistic similarity with the D major work and the identical provenance of the extant sources. The two Double Concertos are not as technically demanding for the soloists as the composer’s violin concertos. The reason for this probably lies in the need to have both parts of a similar level of difficulty irrespective of the players concerned. For whom Dittersdorf composed the works remains a mystery. However, given their relatively early date of composition, it is just possible that he performed them with his younger brother Alexander who also played in the Viennese theatre orchestras during this period. Gumpenhueber [Repertoires] lists both brothers in the orchestra as early as 1762. Certainly the notion that he composed the works to play with his brother is an attractive one and might account for their reduced level of virtuosity.