Symphonies

Franz Anton Hoffmeister numbers among the composers born during the 1750s who distanced themselves from the genre of the symphony during the 1790s without completely refraining from the composition of such works. It is not entirely clear how many symphonies Hoffmeister composed. Forty-four have been identified so far, and at least forty-two of these works had been composed by 1792. Hoffmeister then let a decade pass before he presented himself to the public with his last symphonies, which are heard on this recording. The Symphony in D major in particular favorably impressed the Gewandhaus reviewer for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung: »A symphony by Hoffmeister, it too unpublished, is lively, friendly, in no way shallow, and by far belongs to the most outstanding music that this composer has written for instruments.« Both symphonies are marked by high compositional mastery and great powers of imagination. The overture from the heroicomic opera Der Königssohn aus Ithaka (The King's Son from Ithaka), one of Hoffmeister's most successful stage works, rounds off this CD.