Wanhal, Johann Baptist (1739-1813)

The present work dates from ca 1771–1772 and was advertised in Supplement XIV of the Breitkopf catalogue in 1781. The lag between its probable composition date, which Bryan based both on the work’s stylistic features and the extant sources, and its listing in Breitkopf was unusually long but certainly not without precedent.

Judging from the number of extant manuscript copies, the work appears to have circulated reasonably widely and eventually reached Paris where it was published as the first in a set of Quatre Symphonies concertant…composées par Vanhal by the Bureau d’abonnement musical as Op.18. The publisher’s description of the work as a symphonie concertante likely stems from its obbligato parts for flute and violoncello.

However, although the instruments play throughout the work, they are not used extensively as solo instruments in the sense of being assigned independent melodic material, a hallmark of the symphonie concertant. Wanhal uses them principally to expand the range of doubling options in various octaves in the interests of enhancing orchestral colour.

The same might also be said for the first oboe, and indeed this entire approach to orches-tration is familiar from many other symphonies by Wanhal. The designation “symphonie concertant” would surely not have been Wanhal’s own since the genre had only just begun to gain currency in France in the early 1770s and was not cultivated by Viennese composers at this time.

A copy of the work preserved in the Czech Music Centre in prague under the shelfmark XlIX E 328 (provenance: Kuks) is attributed to Roman hoffstetter (1742–1815), but there are no grounds to favour his authorship of the work over that of Wanhal.