Violin Concerto in G

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. A more likely scenario is that Wanhal wrote them for other performers, perhaps the leaders of the orchestras with whom he worked on a regular basis. It is interesting that Wanhal, who was unusually active in publishing his works, does not seem to have shown any inclination to publish the violin concertos which stands in sharp contrast to the keyboard concertos and flute concertos, for example, both of which are reasonably well represented in early prints. Wanhal’s violin concertos share many common stylistic features with other concertos of the period. The leisurely first movements are an amalgam of short, rhythmically active themes, broader cantabile-style contrasting themes and bravura passage-work. The slow movements are more reflective in character, elegant rather than highly charged emotionally, but beautifully tailored to exploit the lyrical qualities of the violin. The finales resemble the first movements in many respects although the themes themselves are more modern in their phrase morphology and demonstrate a strong kinship with the driving finales of Wanhal’s symphonies.