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Johann Joseph Rösler’s rediscovered Piano Concerto in E flat major

Johann Joseph Rösler

Concerto no. 2 in E flat major for piano and orchestra. Edited by Alena Hönigová

Orchestra: 1,2,0,2 – 2,2,0,0 – timp – str, piano solo

Publisher: Bärenreiter Praha. BA 11550. Full score and piano score available on sale, performance material available on hire

Bild:

Rösler’s Piano Concerto in E flat major, beginning of the autograph manuscript, Prague Conservatory

After his death, Johann Joseph Rösler was almost completely forgotten. But his Piano Concerto in E flat deserves a revival. The new edition from Bärenreiter Praha will contribute to this.

This Urtext edition of the Piano Concerto in E flat major presents a long-lost work by the Bohemian composer, Kapellmeister and piano virtuoso Johann Joseph Rösler (1771–1812), who worked in Prague and Vienna. Although he achieved fame as a pianist and composer and left more than 200 works, his name was quickly forgotten after his death. He was mentioned in the most important 19th century encyclopaedias, but there is still no detailed essay or even a monograph devoted to him today. An exception is the first movement of his Piano Concerto in D major, which was included c. 1890 in the Supplement Volume to the old Beethoven Complete Edition by Guido Adler. A few years earlier, Adler had found manuscript copies of the orchestral parts of this concerto movement in Prague and the matching copy of the piano part in Vienna, with their composer listed as Beethoven. The real composer of this concerto, Rösler, was only identified in 1925 by Max Engel. Other new editions of works by Rösler are rare; only a few songs and a partita for winds were published.

His compositions, mainly preserved in the Archive of the Prague Conservatoire and the Archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, and his autograph thematic catalogue Repertorio di tutte le mie Composizioni incominciando dall' anno 1796, show that he was an accomplished, versatile composer and that his music deserves to be heard again in current musical repertoire.

Johann Joseph Rösler was born on 22 August 1771 in Schemnitz (then Hungary, now Banská Štiavnica in Slovakia), where his father Carl Rösler worked as a mining official. In 1774 Carl Rösler was transferred to Prague as a government official. Joseph Rösler received basic musical instruction from his father, but his further musical ambitions were not fostered at home. After attending grammar school and studying philosophy, he taught himself music in Prague. He succeeded in reaching such a high level in theory and practical music-making that he was offered the post of Kapellmeister and pianist in the Guardasoni opera company in Prague in 1795. From 1805 he worked as Kapellmeister of the opera orchestra in the court theatre. In Vienna he gained favour with Count Lobkowitz and entered his service. But he fell ill by 1810 (probably succumbing to tuberculosis) and died on 28 January 1812 in Prague.

The score of the Concerto in Eb per il Piano Forte, composed in June 1803, contains three classically-structured movements: an Allegro in sonata form, Andantino and Allegro in rondo form with an effective Vivace at the end. The music reveals to the listener the most important musical events which formed Rösler’s style, events such as the premières of Don Giovanni and La clemenza di Tito in Prague, which Mozart himself had rehearsed with the Guardasoni opera company; or Beethoven’s appearances in Prague, where he played his Piano Concertos in B flat major and C major, which were also published in 1801. Rösler enriched the genre in his own way: with beautiful pianistic figurations which reveal a sensitive virtuoso with a fine feeling for his instrument. Here is a witty, colourful and often amusing orchestration which enables us to recognise the experienced Kapellmeister, and engaging with what we expect to hear – leading up to a “classical” continuation which then “disappoints”. Audiences experience some surprises with this.

The new edition reproduces the autograph full score as faithfully as possible, with the whole panoply of subtleties of articulation and phrasing, and in the score layout of the original. This is best and most practical for the piano’s double function as solo and basso continuo instrument in the tutti sections. There is also help for modern-day performers with the realization of the basso continuo in the piano score and modern orchestral parts.

Alena Hönigová
(from [t]akte 1/2018)

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