Václav Jan Křtitel Tomášek - Piano concerto no.1 in C major, Op.18, Jan Simon (piano), Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vladimír Válek (conductor)
I. Allegro con brio - 00:00
II. Tranquillo - 10:33
III. Rondo - 16:45
“Václav Jan Křtitel Tomášek (17 April 1774, Skuteč, Bohemia - 3 April 1850, Prague) was a Czech composer and music teacher. He is generally listed in historical records under the German version of his name, Wenzel Johann Tomaschek. He was undoubtedly the most significant Prague musician and widely respected authority of the Prague music scene during the first half of the 19th century. This is all the more amazing for the fact that he was entirely self-taught, never having had a formal, professional musical education, especially in those areas in which he made his most significant contributions and which he later taught, i.e. piano performance and music theory (composition).
The sixteen year old Tomášek (who had begun his education in Jihlava, then a German town) arrived in Prague In 1790 in order to continue his education, first at a grammar school, then later at the Charles-Ferdinand University school of philosophy and law. The music-loving Count Jiff (Georges) Buquoy, however, turned him from his planned career as a lawyer by offering him an extraordinarily convenient and lucrative post as personal composer and family music teacher. After 1824 Tomášek left the Count's service for good, devoting himself primarily to his teaching activities in the following years. In his apartment in Prague's Lesser Quarter he entertained such major representatives of the musical and cultural world as Hector Berlioz, Niccolo Paganini, Clara Schumann or the young Richard Wagner when they visited Prague. Additionally, he regularly presented private musical performances featuring his best students, including Eduard Hanslick, who would go on to become an influential Viennese music critic, Alexander Dreyschock and Julius Schulhoff, both later internationally famous pianists, and Jan Friedrich Kittl, who later became director of the Prague Conservatory. Tomášek retired from the limelight in the last years of his life, dogged by health problems and personal disappointments.
Jan Tomášek was fairly prolific, and his works include 114 pieces with opus numbers as well as a quantity of unnumbered pieces. Both during and after his lifetime his compositions for solo piano-eclogues, rhapsodies and dithyrambs-and his songs based on Czech and German texts were especially acclaimed. His larger orchestral works-symphonies, overtures and concertos-written mostly around the year 1800 were not as warmly received and are still awaiting their rediscovery and well-deserved rehabilitation.
The first Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in C major, Op. 18 was probably written in the years 1803-1805. The manuscript, archived today along with all of Tomášek's extant works in the Czech Museum of Music in Prague, is not dated, nor is the first edition of the orchestral parts which was printed in Vienna in the early 1800's. What is known, however, is that the work was performed in the 1806-07 winter season. Moreover, this is the only year that orchestral performances were given at Duke Buquoy's home. The composition is dedicated to Her Excellency, the Duchess of Brechanville, née Countess Desfours, who is known to have been one of Tomášek's students." (From Album note by Jarmila Gabrielova)