Pleyel, Ignaz (1757-1831)

Ignaz Pleyel (1757-1831) was at one time the most famous composer in the world. The popularity of his music eclipsed that of even his teacher Haydn and publishers vied to bring out his latest works as soon as they were finished. Some 2000 separate prints of Pleyel works had appeared by 1800 and his fame extended to every corner of Europe and as far afield as North America. Pleyels career as a composer spanned less than thirty years with the majority of his works composed in the 1780s. He founded a successful publishing house in Paris in the mid-1790s and later began manufacturing keyboard instruments. With increasing demands on his time from his business concerns Pleyels productivity as a composer dropped sharply and he ceased composing around 1805. The present work is unusual in that unlike Pleyels other concertos it was never published is not known in any other version. From a stylistic perspective the work appears to have been written earlier than the other concertos dating, perhaps, from his years of study with Haydn. It is certainly less demanding for the soloist than some of the other works although it is by no means uninteresting or lacking in technical difficulties. The scoring, for strings and horns, is old-fashioned and immediately brings to mind the marvellous cello concertos written by Leopold Hofmann in the 1760s and early 1770s. Allan Badley