Dittersdorf, Carl Ditters von (1739-1799)

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.

In many respects Dittersdorf's violin concertos resemble those of his close contemporaries Haydn, Hofmann and Wanhal.

Structurally, they are fairly typical of the mid-18th-century Viennese concerto and much of their musical language is familiar to us from the works of other composers. They are attractive works and their occasional strange juxtaposition of contrasting melodic ideas was noted by Hiller as early as 1768.

Unlike most of the composer's other violin concertos the present work was not offered for sale in the Breitkopf catalogue. This weakens its claims to authenticity to a certain extant but, given how little we know of Dittersdorf's early career, it is by no means conclusive evidence that the work is spurious. In comparison with a number of Dittersdorf's concertos dating from the mid-1760s the F major Concerto seems rather primitive. Nonetheless, there is a good deal to recommend the F major Concerto, not least of all.

Allan Badley