Joseph Johann Baptist Woelfl (surname sometimes written in the German form Wölfl; 24 December 1773 – 21 May 1812) was an Austrian pianist and composer.
He first appeared in public as a soloist on the violin at the age of seven. Moving to
Vienna in 1790 he visited
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and may have taken lessons from him. His first
opera, Der Höllenberg, appeared there in 1795.
Woelfl was very tall (over 6 feet), and with an enormous finger span (his hand could strike
a thirteenth, according to his contemporary
Václav Tomášek); to his wide grasp of the keyboard he owed a facility of execution which he turned to good account, especially in his improvised performances.
Although he dedicated his 1798 sonatas
Op. 6 to
Beethoven, the two were rivals. Beethoven however bested Woelfl in a piano 'duel' at the house of Baron Raimund Wetzlar in 1799, after which Woelfl's local popularity waned.[1] After spending the years 1801 to 1805 in Paris, Woelfl moved to London, where his first concert performance was on 27 May 1805. On 12 March 1806 he published Six English Songs which he dedicated to the English soprano
Jane Bianchi.[2]
In England, he enjoyed commercial if not critical success. In 1808 he published his Sonata, Op. 41, which, on account of its technical difficulty, he entitled "
Non Plus Ultra"; and, in reply to the challenge, a sonata by
Dussek, originally called "Le Retour à Paris", was reprinted with the title Plus Ultra, and an ironic dedication to Non Plus Ultra. He also completed for publication an unfinished sonata of
George Pinto.
Woelfl died in Great Marylebone Street, London, on 21 May 1812. He is buried in
St. Marylebone Churchyard.
His music was championed and performed by Romantic composers like
Schubert,
Chopin and
Liszt.
Recordings
Woelfl's works have long disappeared from the concert repertory. However, in 2003 four selected piano sonatas of his (Op. 25 and Op. 33) were recorded by the pianist Jon Nakamatsu (Harmonia Mundi CD # 907324). (An Adda CD in 1988 contained his three Opus 28 sonatas, played by
Laure Colladant, who also recorded the sonatas Opus 6 for Adès in 1993 and the three Opus 33 sonatas for the label Mandala in 1995.)
In 2006, German pianist
Yorck Kronenberg [
de] recorded Woelfl's piano concertos 1, 5 and 6 in addition to a movement from the piano concerto 4.[3] The piano concertos closely resemble the later piano concertos of Mozart, who had pioneered the genre; they can be distinguished from Mozart's works by the larger range of the piano, which had been extended shortly after Mozart's death.
Nataša Veljković has since recorded the 2nd and 3rd Piano Concertos and the Concerto da Camera in E-flat major (1810) on
CPO.[4]
There are also now recordings of the two symphonies (Pratum Integrum Orchestra, 2008), three string quartets (Quatuor Mosaïques, 2012), and the Grand Duo for cello and piano.[5] Toccata Classics has issued two CDs of the piano music (2017 and 2021).[6] In 2021, Dutch pianist Mattias Spee recorded an album with works by Joseph Woelfl with record label
TRPTK [
nl].[7]
Works
Piano concertos
Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 20 in G major (c. 1802–1803)
Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 26 (published c. 1806)
Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 32 in F major
Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 36 in G major "The Calm" (published c.1808)
Piano Concerto No. 5, Op. 43 in C major "Grand Military Concerto" (1799?)
Piano Concerto No. 6, Op. 49 in D major "The Cuckoo" (published 1809)
Symphonies
Symphony in G minor, Op. 40. Dedicated to
Luigi Cherubini.
OCLC905233658 This work is rather larger in dimensions (320+ bars in each of first movement and finale) than Woelfl's Op. 41.
IMSLP has an autograph manuscript of an 1807 Symphony No. 3 by Woelfl (in one movement, or one movement of a larger work).
A publication ca.1825 was made of 3 Grand Symphonies by Wölfl. (The British Library record does not give an opus number.)
The
Moldenhauer archive has (in manuscript, though possibly not autograph) part of what is described as "J. Woelfl's 5th grand sinfonia : for full band".
OCLC122417037. Dated March 1808.
String quartets
3 String Quartets, Op. 4, dedicated to Leopold Staudinger[8]
^Denora, Tia (1996). "The Beethoven-Woelfl piano duel". In
Jones, David Wyn (ed.). Music in eighteenth-century Austria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 259–282.
^"Clarinet concerto", Apollon Musikverlag
Archived 2015-12-22 at the
Wayback Machine, which has an image of the first page of the score (clearly B-flat major). "Die Uraufführung fand am 27. 09. 1796 im kaiserl. königl. Hoftheater in Wien statt."