Violin Concerto in B

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. Wanhal, like most of his professional colleagues, was a very proficient violinist although he was not regarded as a virtuoso like Dittersdorf, or, to a lesser extent, Hofmann. Nonetheless, it is unlikely that his violin concertos were written first and foremost for his own use. On the basis of the number of extant sources, the most popular of Wanhal’s violin concertos appears to have been the Concerto in Bb (Weinmann IIb:B1) which survives in no fewer than six copies and is known to have been performed by Mozart. According to his own report, Mozart’s performance impressed those who heard it and we must assume that the work was chosen with some care to show off his strengths as a violinist. Like Mozart’s own concertos, Wanhal’s B flat Violin Concerto is not a work that calls for exceptional virtuosity. Its carefully sculpted lines and spare orchestral textures call for precision, beauty of tone and consummate musicianship to reveal the work’s many beauties.