Wanhal, Johann Baptist (1739-1813)

Johann Baptist Wanhal was a prolific and popular composer of concertos. His total output, which runs to over sixty works, can be compared with that of his close contemporary Leopold Hofmann whose concertos also enjoyed great popularity during the 1760s and 1770s. Like Hofmann, Wanhal did not write concertos exclusively for his own use although he doubtless played a number of them when and where occasion demanded. There is little way of knowing for whom the majority of his concertos were written given the scope of his freelance activities, but the fact that so many of the works found their way into contemporary thematic catalogues suggests that he sought a wide public for them. Flute Concerto in A is one of several flute concertos by Wanhal that were published in Paris and it was also issued on London by J. Fentum. Although the date of composition is uncertain, Concerto A1 belongs stylistically with Wanhal’s later concertos and possibly dates from the early 1780s.