Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1715-1777)
Konzert für Querflöte, 2 Violinen und Basso continuo G-Dur
1	1. Allegro con spirito
2	2. Andante
3	3. Allegro

Giuseppe Bonno (1711-1788)
Konzert für Querflöte, 2 Violinen, Viola und Basso continuo G-Dur
4	1. Allegro
5	2. Adagio
6	3. Allegro

Florian Leopold Gassmann (1729-1774)
Konzert für Flöte, 2 Violinen, Viola und Basso continuo c-moll
7	1. Allegro
8	2. Adagio non tanto
9	3. Allegro di molto

Matthias Georg Monn (1717-1750)
Konzert für Cembalo, Querflöte, Violine und Basso continuo B-Dur
10	1. Allegro
11	2. Larghetto
12  3. Allegro

Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1715-1777)
Konzert für Querflöte, 2 Violinen, Viola und Basso continuo D-Dur
13	1. Vivace
14	2. Largo
15	3. Allegro 

Ensemble Klingekunst
Sieglinde Größinger - flute & direction

Our first collaborative project with Klingekunst and the ensemble’s soloist and leader Sieglinde Größinger presents CD premiere recordings of the earliest Viennese flute concertos, which date from the reign of Empress Maria Theresa. The selected concertos by Georg Christoph Wagenseil, Giuseppe Bonno, Florian Leopold Gassmann, and Matthias Georg Monn, heard here on historical instruments, represent a significant contribution to the artistic recovery of the forgotten Viennese music culture of this epoch, a field that is only beginning to be researched. When Emperor Carl VI died in 1740, his successor Maria Theresa inherited a state budget burdened by heavy deficits. Forced to adopt economy measures, the new empress suspended the operation of the court orchestra and then offered its services to interested parties. However, the artistically marginalized musicians did not accept defeat when these unexpected developments put them in an existentially precarious position. No longer obliged to serve and obey a court aesthetic, they delighted in experimentation with new styles and forms of expression. The revolutionary character of these exciting times very much may be viewed as preparation for the Viennese classical period. Moreover, the flute now became a solo instrument for use in the orchestra and concert performances. Until about 1740 it was only rarely employed and then merely for additional tone color, but now it first enjoyed its share of spotlight. ---jpc.de

Topped and tailed by concertos by Wagenseil, this survey of the mid-18th-century flute concerto in Vienna also features works by Monn, Gaßmann and Bonno. Four of them are scored for flute with (here single) strings and continuo. Broadly speaking, they are rococo in style, not really managing to escape Baroque ritornello form, with solo episodes accompanied by upper strings or continuo. The odd man out in the recital is the Monn piece which is for concertato harpsichord, flute, violin and bass; it really is an original sounding composition, with the keyboard sometimes duetting with the flute, sometimes the true soloist while the flute and violin provide a duetting background. The presence of lute as a continuo instrument prevents any direct comparison with C. P. E. Bach’s quartets. It is a pleasant piece, though. In fact, the whole disc is enjoyable, and Größinger provides some neat cadenzas in the flute concertos. I suspect this is a line-up from whom we shall hear more. ---Brian Clark, earlymusicreview.com

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01. Concerto No.3 in F major - I. Allegro    [0:05:28.24]
02. Concerto No.3 in F major - II. Andante    [0:06:09.46]
03. Concerto No.3 in F major - III. Tempo di Menuetto    [0:06:19.73]
04. Concerto No.5 in G major - I. Allegro moderato    [0:05:13.08]
05. Concerto No.5 in G major - II. Andante    [0:06:12.28]
06. Concerto No.5 in G major - III. Allegro    [0:03:48.28]
07. Concerto No.2 in C major - I. Allegro    [0:03:27.05]
08. Concerto No.2 in C major - II. Andante    [0:05:30.63]
09. Concerto No.2 in C major - III. Tempo di Menuetto    [0:03:41.14]
10. Concerto No.6 in A major - I. Vivace    [0:04:51.04]
11. Concerto No.6 in A major - II. Larghetto    [0:08:23.44]
12. Concerto No.6 in A major - III. Tempo di Menuetto    [0:05:03.04]

Elisabeth Ullmann - organ
Piccolo Concerto Wien
Roberto Sensi – conductor

Georg Wagenseil is one of those myriad composers who lurk at the peripheries of the 18th century repertoire. One or other work of his - usually the Alto Trombone Concerto in E flat or the Harp Concerto in G - pops up here and there on various recordings, whereas monographs like this new Accent release are few and far between. Half a dozen years ago CPO committed a mini-series of two volumes to some of his Symphonies, and one or two other labels have recorded clusters of Concertos, including indeed Accent: ACC 24186 featured Wagenseil's imaginative Concerto for oboe, bassoon, winds, strings and continuo in E flat.

There seems to be one other CD of Organ Concertos, issued by the German label EBS (6089) in the 1990s, still available over the internet and despite the numbering system used, all different works to those in the present recording. This is in fact a re-release, having originally been issued on the Italian Symphonia label a decade ago (SY 01194).

Wagenseil's relative neglect - or reputation for mediocrity - is something of a puzzle, because he was not only a renowned keyboard virtuoso and pedagogue, but his music was held in considerable esteem in his lifetime - by the likes of Charles Burney, Haydn and Mozart. Undoubtedly, his prolific production played a role in later critical hubris: unless going by the name of Haydn, anyone who writes nearly a hundred Symphonies, the same number again of Concertos, liturgical works, keyboard pieces and more, must surely be writing by numbers to some degree. There is also the consideration that Wagenseil's mature music is almost quintessentially galant in style - for some critics a musical Buridan's Ass conservatively static between the Baroque and the Classical.

Yet in fairness to Wagenseil, he was a teacher and there is understandably an element of didacticism in his numerous keyboard Concertos. The 'orchestra' is thus usually a chamber ensemble - Piccolo Concerto Wien employs seven players for this recording - that plays a fairly subsidiary role to the soloist, who provides flourishes of figurations over chiefly pedagogic rhythms and harmonies. Wagenseil's keyboard Concertos include at least two sets of six that might be performed on the organ. The present set are taken from the 'Six Concertos for the Harpsichord or Organ with Accompanyments for Two Violins and a Bass', published in London around 1765 by John Walsh, who also published Handel's Organ Concertos, with which Wagenseil's are loosely contemporaneous.

The four works heard here, splendidly performed on period instruments by the hugely experienced Austrian organist Elisabeth Ullmann and 18th-century specialists Piccolo Concerto Wien, are structurally and harmonically similar to each other - an upbeat major key mood, three movements, a fast opener and minuet finale sandwiching a longer andante, even dynamics etc. Yet for all their undoubted textbook straightforwardness, they are utterly winsome, with an appealing stylistic tisane of the German/Austrian, Italian and French piling the foot-tapping rhythms and catchy melodies high.

The music is lovingly recorded in an intimate acoustic. The well-written booklet notes are in English, French and German and offer a decent biographical summary of the composer. Rather surprisingly there is no information on Ullmann or Piccolo Concerto Wien. ---Byzantion, musicweb-international.com

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1. Concerto for oboe, bassoon, winds, strings & continuo in E flat major, WWV 345: Allegro assai
2. Concerto for oboe, bassoon, winds, strings & continuo in E flat major, WWV 345: Andantino più tosto Allegro
3. Concerto for oboe, bassoon, winds, strings & continuo in E flat major, WWV 345: Presto	play

4. Concerto for harp & strings in F major, WWV 281: Allegro
5. Concerto for harp & strings in F major, WWV 281: Andante
6. Concerto for harp & strings in F major, WWV 281: Tempo di Minuetto

7. Concerto for fortepiano, violin & strings in A major, WWV 325: Vivace
8. Concerto for fortepiano, violin & strings in A major, WWV 325: Larghetto
9. Concerto for fortepiano, violin & strings in A major, WWV 325: Tempo di Minuetto

10. Concerto for flute, strings & continuo in D major, WWV 342: Allegro	play
11. Concerto for flute, strings & continuo in D major, WWV 342: Largo
12. Concerto for flute, strings & continuo in D major, WWV 342: Allegro vivace

Echo Du Danube
Alexander Weimann - director

Dutiful Viennese court kapellmeister Georg Christoph Wagenseil may be viewed by some as having attained a special level of faceless mediocrity in respect to musical history, enjoying a position somewhat above that of the long-lived, enormously productive, and equally obscure Adalbert Gyrowetz. That some of Wagenseil's works have been mistaken for Mozart and Franz Joseph Haydn attests to some extent of their relative quality, and his Concerto for alto trombone is a mainstay for that instrument. Likewise, Wagenseil's G major Harp concerto -- merely a suggested alternate instrumentation for what is otherwise a harpsichord concerto -- has found considerable traction among harp players. While there is a harp concerto included on Accent's Georg Christoph Wagenseil: Concerts choisis, it is not the familiar one in G but a second, previously unknown harp concerto in F major recovered through the dogged persistence of this album's coordinator, Michael Dücker. The other concerti -- for fortepiano, flute and oboe, bassoon, and winds -- are also "new," rescued from the heaps of manuscript found at Castle Kromeríz in the Czech Republic. All are expertly rendered by Dücker's group Echo du Danube, a period chamber group that specializes in music of the eighteenth century, under the direction of Alexander Weimann.

This is strong advocacy for Wagenseil as a composer; he was not a minor figure in his time, being Johann Joseph Fux's last and favorite student, not to mention his successor in the courts of Vienna. Wagenseil did struggle with lack of recognition in the court, and once worked for a period of two years without being paid, and when he died in 1777, Mozart served as his replacement. He composed between 65-80 symphonies, about 30 concerti (mostly for harpsichord), about 10 operas, sacred music, and numerous chamber works and keyboard pieces. The perceived downside of his reputation rests on his pre-classic approach, which seemingly always retains some vestige of the Baroque, heard most prominently in the Flute Concerto in D major heard here, and his tendency to resort to quickie finales and predictable formal schemes. Luckily for Echo du Danube, that tendency isn't present in the four concerti heard here; all four sound strikingly fresh and resonate with the energy of a good group attempting to erect a new edifice on a reputation thought to be a known quantity. The Harp Concerto does stand out, particularly in its understated, mostly minor-key Andante, and the opening Allegro of the Flute Concerto is also noteworthy in its use of Baroque harmonic sequences and slight sense of aggression.

Accent's Georg Christoph Wagenseil: Concerts choisis does succeed in providing a renewed perspective on Wagenseil's artistry and helps clarify why Haydn and Mozart both found him a composer of such great interest. It is easily recommendable to those who appreciate eighteenth century chamber music and should come as a welcome surprise even to those who have already written Wagenseil off as a non-contender. ---Uncle Dave Lewis , Rovi

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