Estimated duration

1 h 30 min., incl. intermission

Organizer

Suomalaisen barokkiorkesterin kannatusyhdistys ry

The Lost Treasure of Crusell

Weber–Crusell–Mozart

Tommi Hyytinen, horn
Finnish Baroque Orchestra
Janne Nisonen, conductor

When the horn player Tommi Hyytinen asked his wife Johanna Eränkö Hyytinen – a composer and musicologist – for help with finding information about Bernhard Crusell’s horn concerto, he couldn’t have imagined what his question would eventually lead to. Finding new and interesting information was quick, and at the same time Eränkö Hyytinen noticed that her previous idea for a doctoral thesis gave way for the Crusell research. A part of the still unpublished research has been to make a reconstruction of the horn concerto, giving it the shape it had when it was last performed about 200 years ago.

Of the original material of Bernhard Crusell’s (1775–1838) horn concerto, only the solo part is still intact, and even that only partly in the third movement Rondo. The movements Allegro and Romance cantabile have also been preserved as arrangements for horn and wind instrument by Franz Preumayr (1782–1853). Preumayr was a good friend of Crusell’s, his colleague in the royal orchestra as well as his son-in-law.

Crusell’s concerto for horn and orchestra F major was premiered in April 1810 in Stockholm with Johann Michael Hirschfeld (1776–1841) as the soloist. He performed the concerto several times during the following years. The latest research also show that there were other contemporary soloists, among them Gottfried Schunke (1777–1861) who performed the concerto in Stuttgart in 1823 as the soloist of the local court orchestra.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No 41 in C major is generally known as “Jupiter”. The work is thought of as the apex of Mozart’s symphonic expression, and it is the longest of Mozart’s symphonies. During the summer 1788 he composed three symphonies, of which the one in C major was the last.

It is likely that the contemporary publisher who coined the work’s name associated it with the supreme of the Roman gods, Jupiter Lucetius, ie. the bringer of light. You can also hear echoes of the Pythagoreans musica universalis in the fugue-like textures of the finale of the symphony, constructed with mathematical precision. “Jupiter” is filled with brightness and light, and a music of great joy and beauty grows out of it’s seemingly simple motifs.

The concert begins with Carl Maria von Weber’s 2nd symphony, which also is in C major. Weber wrote his only symphonies when he was only twenty years old, and they were both composed during 1807.