Vojtěch Matyáš Jírovec (Adalbert Gyrowetz): Symfonie F dur, Solo Oboe Zdeněk Adam, Czech Chamber Philharmonic, Petr Chromcák (conductor)
I. Allegro - 00:00
II. Adagio - 11:21
III. Menuetto - 17:46
IV. Rondo - 22:16
Vojtěch Matyáš Jírovec (Adalbert Gyrowetz) (20 February 1763 - 19 March 1850) was a Bohemian composer. In his time he was an extraordinarily successful composer and conductor and he played a major role in Viennese musical life in the first decades of the 19th century. He considered himself to be a German composer and used a German form of his name, Adalbert Gyrowetz, and it is listed as such both in foreign encyclopedias and on printed scores.
Vojtěch Jírovec came from České Budějovice, where his father was the choirmaster of the local cathedral. He received his elementary musical education in his home town and soon was performing in public as a violinist, later also assuming the function of church organist.
After studies at the Piarist gymnasium in České Budějovice, Jírovec went off to study law in Prague. Although he abandoned the university for lack of finances, he had received a relatively good education, which along with his knowledge of several languages would later help him to move around in the highest social circles and allow him to hold the position of a secretary and later that of a an adviser in the diplomatic service.
At around this time Jírovec was in the employ of Count Franz von Fünfkirchen in Brno, whose employees were all musicians. Here he started composing (among other things) symphonies, of which he was eventually to write more than 60. In 1785 he moved to Vienna and met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who performed one of Jírovec's symphonies in the same year. From 1786 to around 1793, he travelled throughout Europe. He spent some time in Paris, where he established that some symphonies that had been published as the work of Joseph Haydn were in fact his work. He spent three years in Italy, meeting Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Rome and studying with Nicola Sala in Naples. In 1791 he met Haydn, whom he idolized, in London. While in London, he was commissioned by Johann Peter Salomon to compose symphonies to be performed at Salomon's Hanover Square Rooms concerts.
Jírovec left London, returning via Brussels, Paris, Dresden, Prague and České Budějovice to Vienna after an absence of eight years. There he was offered the position of assistant Kapellmeister in the Court Theater (1804), being responsible for composing and performing a new opera and ballet every year. This position brought a fundamental change in the genres practiced by Jírovec the composer. Whereas up until that time he had for the most part written symphonies and chamber works, he concentrated in the subsequent period on works for the theater.
In 1831 Jírovec went into retirement, and although he continued to write music, his fame as composer, which was mostly grounded in contemporary taste, gradually waned. Towards the end of his life, he wrote Biographie de Adalbert Gyrowetz (published in Vienna in 1848), which is of interest as a subjective account but also as a documentary on the musical events of that age.
The quantity of works composed by Vojtěch Jírovec is quite extraordinary: 28 operas, 40 ballets, over 60 symphonies, concertos, 19 masses, dozens of string quartets, piano trios, piano sonatas and songs.