Leopold Koželuch: Symphony in G minor, London Mozart Players, Matthias Bamert

Leopold Koželuch - Symphony in G minor, London Mozart Players, Matthias Bamert (conductor) I. Allegro – 00:00 II. Adagio – 07:01 III. Presto – 12:38 Leopold Koželuch, born Jan Antonín Koželuh, alternatively also Leopold Koželuh, Leopold Kotzeluch (1747 – 1818) was a Czech composer and music teacher. “Leopold Kozeluch was born on 20 June 1747 at Velvary in Bohemia, some twenty miles north-west of Prague. He was baptised as Jan Antonin, but about 1773 adopted the name of Leopold to distinguish himself from his cousin and teacher, Jan Antonin Kozeluch. After receiving his basic musical training at school in his native village he read law at the university in Prague, but continued his musical studies with his cousin and with the composer and pianist František Dušek. In 1778 he moved to Vienna, where he quickly established himself as a composer, pianist, and teacher, numbering among his pupils the blind pianist Maria Theresia von Paradis, Archduchess Elisabeth of Wurttemberg (later the first wife of Emperor Franz II), and the Emperor's daughter Marie-Louise. By 1781 he had sufficient repute in the Imperial capital to be able to decline the invitation to succeed Mozart as court organist to the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, and in 1792 he was appointed Imperial Chamber Conductor and Court Composer. Apart from an early oratorio, Moisi in Egitto, most of Kozeluch's works for church and stage (which include six operas) have not survived, and his achievement must be judged by his purely instrumental compositions: the eleven symphonies now authentically ascribed to him, concertos, chamber music (duos, trios, quartets), and piano pieces (including some fifty sonatas). The key of G minor produced a handful of remarkable symphonies in the second half of the eighteenth century, at least partly under the influence of the preromantic Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) movement in German literature: by Haydn, J.C. Bach (Op. 6 No. 6, 1770), two by J.B. Vanhal , Mozart (No. 25 and No. 40); and, yes, Kozeluch (1787) — his only one in a minor key. It has no minuet, and in the outer movements the two horns are crooked in G and B flat, in order to provide wider harmonic scope. (from Album notes by Robin Golding)