KOZELUCH: Piano Concertos Nos. 1, 4 and 5

Chronique

Bohemian composer Leopold Kozeluch is sometimes cited as the successor to Mozart at the Viennese court, as he was named to the position on June 12, 1792, by Emperor Francis II. However, "succession" to Mozart is not exactly the way to put it, as Mozart's Emperor Leopold II had died earlier in 1792, and so the court at which Kozeluch served was an entirely different one than had employed Mozart. One thing Kozeluch did have in common with Mozart was composing piano concertos -- Kozeluch wrote 23 such works in comparison to Mozart's 27, though all but two of them date from the 1780s, before his tenure in the Viennese court. Nonetheless, Kozeluch was based in Vienna at the time, and his concertos reflect the same high Viennese classical style Mozart perfected. Although they have been long known and cataloged, Kozeluch's piano concerti have never been recorded before, and the Kozeluch keyboard music that has made it onto recordings in the past have mainly been limited to his solo piano sonatas -- there are 50 of those -- and some of his shorter keyboard works. Swiss pianist Tomas Dratva, who has studied Kozeluch's piano concertos in manuscript and edited them for performance, takes the opportunity to go to the mat for Kozeluch on Oehms Classics' Leopold Kozeluch: Piano Concertos 1, 4 & 5, as accompanied by the Slovak Sinfonietta Zilina.
It's certainly a noble try -- these three concerti do share many of same elements that make Mozart's concerti enjoyable, including a clean sense of line, an attractive and restrained use of virtuosic filigree, and an inevitable sense of formal balance. However, they do lack that added melodic quality that makes Mozart's piano concertos from No. 17 up so immediately memorable even the first time one hears them. While Kozeluch's concertos are attractive to one's ear, once out of the ear they are out of mind. One barrier to enjoying these pieces is the recording, which is rather brittle in the top and sounds at times like something recorded in East Germany in the 1960s, though it was recorded only in 2006. Unless one desires a comprehensive understanding of the piano concerto in the eighteenth century or is devoted to the cause of Bohemian composers, it is probably safe to say that Oehms Classics' Leopold Kozeluch: Piano Concertos 1, 4 & 5 is not an essential choice.

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