Beethoven's World: Salieri, Hummel, Vorisek

Album review

2020, the year of Beethoven, has the merit of taking stock of the music that was being made in Vienna in the first quarter of the 19th century. This new volume in the series, conceived and directed by Reinhard Goebel in a co-production between the Sony Classical label and West German Radio (WDR), widens the gap even more between the run of the mill composers of the time of the Master of Bonn and Beethoven's powerful genius.

The 26 Variations on the aria of the "Folies d'Espagne" details the path taken by Antonio Salieri, the official court composer who was one of Beethoven's (and Schubert's) teachers, but who was later influenced by his former pupil, especially in this suite where certain Beethovenian writing processes are recognisable, with more or less involuntary hints of the Seventh Symphony. But a solid craft and a skilful instrumentation are not enough to produce a masterpiece.

Johann Nepomuk Hummel was the pupil of Mozart, Haydn and Salieri. In 1805, while Beethoven was composing Leonore (the first version of his opera Fidelio) and the Fourth Piano Concerto, Hummel wrote his Double Concerto for Violin and Piano (performed here by violinist Mirijam Contzen and pianist Herbert Schuch), a charming and quite decorative work that seems to have retained only slight influences from his great predecessors, Mozart in particular. Born in the year Mozart died and dying two years before Beethoven, the Bohemian composer Jan Václav Hugo Voříšek worked in turn with Hummel and rubbed shoulders with Beethoven and Schubert. His only Symphony in D major, composed in 1821, is solidly written and follows in the footsteps of Beethoven's first two symphonies. © François Hudry/Qobuz