00:00 - I. Allegro moderato
10:49 - II. Romanza: Andantino e cantabile
16:36 - III. Rondo: Vivace
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Bassoon: Martin Kuuskmann
Conductor: Risto Joost
Orchestra: Tallinna Kammerorkester
Year of Recording: 2014
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"Hummel composed this work "circa 1805"; there is no record of the first performance. The soloist is accompanied by strings. Hummel's father, director of the Pressburg Imperial School for Military Music, was lured to Vienna in 1785 by Emanuel Schikaneder to conduct the orchestra at his Theater auf der Wieden. Mozart, the impresario's lodge-brother and future Magic Flute collaborator, was so impressed by Johann's pianistic talent that he offered to teach him gratis. Hummel lived in his apartment for the next two years, and in 1787 made his public debut at a Mozart concert in Dresden. Papa Hummel took a cue from Leopold Mozart and toured his boychild from 1788 to 1793. In London, Johann not only studied with Muzio Clementi but played a concert in 1792 directed by Haydn's sagacious impresario, Salomon.
Back in Vienna, fifteen-year-old Hummel studied with venerable Albrechtsberger (to whom an exasperated Haydn sent the incorrigible Beethoven that same year). He also solicited advice from "Papa" himself, and operatic instruction from Salieri. In 1804, Prince Nicolaus Esterházy II engaged Hummel to succeed the elderly Haydn as Kapellmeister at Eisenstadt, where he remained until his dismissal in 1811 -- for neglect of duties. In addition to solo concerts, Hummel conducted increasingly -- most notably at Weimar beginning in 1819, and retained the title of Kapellmeister until his death. Alive, he was a triple-threat celebrity, composing, conducting, and continuing to play the piano throughout Europe. Carl Czerny became his most celebrated pupil, although Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt were composers whose piano music he influenced. Following his death, however, Hummel was promptly relegated to a footnote in musical history. Seven piano concertos and virtually all of his solo keyboard works gathered dust on library shelves; not one of a dozen operas and ballets survived in the repertoire, nor any of his church music. A sextet for piano and winds and the long-lost trumpet concerto are almost the only works played today.
This undated "Grand Concerto" for bassoon and strings remained unpublished and unknown until, just recently, the manuscript turned up in the British Library. Hummel's latest biographer, Joel Sachs, has assigned a speculative date: ca. 1805. It was composed, according to the title page, "di Vienna . . . per il Sigr Griesbacher." William Waterhouse has written (for a Philips CD recording) that "the solo part in a number of places has been amended later by the composer; these are mostly in passages of virtuoso writing. . . . It is not possible to identify 'Signor Griesbacher' [although] the likeliest candidate would appear to be Raimund (1751 or 1752 - 1818)," who was appointed instrument-maker to the Imperial Court at Vienna in 1800.
As a composer Hummel looked backwards, to his disadvantage, to the efflorescence of Romanticism in the wake of Carl Maria von Weber. Echoes of Haydn and Mozart are heard throughout the F major Bassoon Concerto: tuneful, charming and structurally conventional (sonata-form first movement, ternary Romanza in B flat, and 6/8 rondo), but far more difficult to play on the complicated modern bassoon than it was on the seven-key ancestor that Mozart and Weber wrote for, along with Hummel." (Robert Dettmer)
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