Natasa Veljkovic, Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim, Johannes Moesus - Wölfl: Piano Concertos (2021)

More Joseph Wölfl discoveries. The 2008 release (with Yorck Kronenberg) of three piano concertos by Joseph Wölfl featured the recording premieres of mirthful pieces in the style of Mozart and Early Viennese Classicism, and this 2021 release with more concertos by Wölfl – this time congenially interpreted by Nastaša Veljković – shows just what magnificent music this composer working in Beethoven’s immediate musical environment was writing.

As in Wölfl’s Second Piano Concerto, so too in his third such work: he follows the tradition shaped by Mozart in matters of form. However, here a tendency toward formal trimming is already in evidence, a tendency that Wölfl pursued in his later London concertos and very decidedly so in the Concerto da camera, WoO 97, for piano, flute, and strings. What we have in this work, which was published in London in 1810, is in every respect a reduced concerto, not only in the dimensions of the orchestral ensemble but also in length, though the overall formal scheme is retained. The solos in particular are more tightly constructed and more strongly integrated into the orchestral part – with the small ensemble size contributing its share here.